Season Ticket Refund - 36 (b) under NCoC

[shotayo]

Good Morning,


Advice sort.

I am currently in dispute with a TOC about whether section 36 (b) of NcoC allows passengers to use split tickets when calculating the required return fare.

Season ticket 7 day weekly Manchester Airport to Milton Keynes Central 20 December - 26 December 2013.

Ticket sent by recorded delivery to customer relations 21 December, (recorded delivery signed for on 23 December).

TOC says that as a return ticket is £205.00 no refund applicable. However, if section 36 b allows the return ticket to be made up of splits, then a refund could technically be available

 

[ASharpe]

I'm sure someone will come along soon to give good advice.

Would the splits you have proposed to the TOC give you the same or a greater range of routes than the season you purchased? I'm not sure they can be compared if not.

 

[CyrusWuff]

From the last set of Season Ticket refund instructions in The Manual (RIP), the only occasion where a TOC would use split tickets to calculate a season ticket refund is for an out-boundary Travelcard, where you're supposed to use the Anytime Day Return "Train-Tube" fare for the relevant zones plus the relevant Return from the origin to the boundary station. (Though I suspect most clerks would still use the Anytime Day Travelcard rate, which may work in the customer's favour).

For any other ticket, you use the through fare. This ensures consistency as one clerk may calculate splitting at X, whereas another may find a cheaper combination splitting at Y and Z.

And off the top of my head, I don't believe Virgin set 7 Day rates for the majority of their flows, just a base rate for calculating monthly and longer prices, so it's possible that the weekly should never have been issued in the first place.

 

[bb21]

Hmm, I think I see where the confusion lies.

It was very poor wording in the NRCoC and unfortunate that the words "combination of tickets" is used. The intention of this wording I believe is to cater for the situation where a combination of weeklies and return tickets is required to cover the period of use. I don't see how it could possibly mean the combination of tickets in the sense of Condition 19. For a start, where would you split? Would every refund request have to go through hours of checking for split fares in case there is a cheaper one? That would clearly be absurd.

The weekly is only about £1 more than the Anytime Return which is what you need to cover your use on Friday 20th December, and I suspect that it would have been a similar situation before the January fares round, so unfortunately I think Virgin are correct technically speaking.

And off the top of my head, I don't believe Virgin set 7 Day rates for the majority of their flows, just a base rate for calculating monthly and longer prices, so it's possible that the weekly should never have been issued in the first place.

After consulting the season ticket calculator, it would appear that the current weekly fare of £214.10 is the base rate, and available as a 7-day season, so this is probably not a market-priced flow, oddly.

 

[Haywain]

I agree with the majority of what CyrusWuff and bb21 have said above. I would just add that Virgin might reasonably argue that the season price is related to the price of the Anytime Return, and that if the refund were based on some combination of split tickets then the season price would also be based on that combination, and there would still be no refund due, as you would have paid less to start with.

 

[Greenback]

I think bb21 is spot on. The principle regarding season ticket refunds when I used to do them was that the customer would be charged for the amount of days usage by way of the cheapest possible combination of daily, weekly monthly or other period season ticket.

For example, if someone had claimed a refund on an annual season begun on 2nd Jan from Reading to Basingstoke, and then wanted a refund on 15th March, we would caluclate the refund base don the amount the custoemr would have paid for a season valid between those dates.

If the refund application was made before 1st Feb, we would calculate how many weekly and daily tickets (if applicable) would have been bought for the equivalent period.

No allowance was ever made or consideration given to possible ticket splits. It was a simple Origin to Destination calculation using unrestricted tickets, as that is in effect what a season provides.

I am not aware that any changes have been made regarding these underlying principles.

 

[bb21]

Frankly I don't see how it would work otherwise.

When usage is taken into account, it is based on one return journey a day, on any train because it is impossible to ascertain exactly which service was used. Now you wouldn't be able to use any train with a set of split tickets (possibly on a few routes but that's not really significant in the grand scheme of things) so the only reasonable ticket to base the calculation on is the cheapest through ticket that allows any train to be used, which is the Anytime Return in this case, the Anytime Day Return or the Off-Peak Return in other cases.

 

[Greenback]

I agree. I think that the OP will be wasting their time if they choose to pursue this.