Refund due to website error?

[Imatrain]

I'm currently on a train from East Croydon to Littlehampton that departed at 11.34am.

At East Croydon there were several ticket machines out of service, and the train was about to arrive so I tried to book a ticket on my phone.

I say tried - because I went from the National Rail app to the Southern website, and got to the point of entering a code that was texted to me to approve my PayPal payment - but the next screen I saw was asking me to give my PayPal email address again.

So having not seen an order confirmation I naturally assumed this order had failed, and a machine then became available so I made a purchase of paper tickets, which I then proceeded to use for the journey (made the train in the nick of time).

Imagine my surprise when I randomly checked my emails whilst on the train and see that the e-ticket order did go through!

I have sent a message to Southern about this with a view to getting a refund - I wanted to see if anyone on here has ever experienced anything like this, or heard of this?

 

[yorkie]

Sorry to hear that.

How soon did you make the refund request?

Many retailers will have a 'cooling off' period for unused tickets, for example our forum's ticketing site would allow a refund within 15 minutes (for a same-day journey), although I'm not sure if that still applies if you select a departure within that 15 minute window.

I don't know what GTR's policy is, and a quick search didn't produce an answer.

 

[Imatrain]

Unfortunately it was a little while until I noticed the email, and then I spent a bit of time trying to work out how to request a refund - in the end I had to use a generic form to contact GTR...this was about an hour after the purchase.

It is a strange issue - hopefully someone will review my case and see that my e-ticket purchase was 1 minute before my paper ticket purchase, and that the e-tickets were never scanned.

I don't have email alerts set up on my phone and this is one use case where it would have been handy!

 

[WesternLancer]

Unfortunately it was a little while until I noticed the email, and then I spent a bit of time trying to work out how to request a refund - in the end I had to use a generic form to contact GTR...this was about an hour after the purchase.

It is a strange issue - hopefully someone will review my case and see that my e-ticket purchase was 1 minute before my paper ticket purchase, and that the e-tickets were never scanned.

I don't have email alerts set up on my phone and this is one use case where it would have been handy!

If the e ticket was never scanned then I would suggest the e ticket retailer should refund you. Not the retailer of the ticket you actually used.