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SOLVED Refund help (LNER / Trainline)

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vandoorn

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Joined
3 Jun 2025
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9
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Yorkshire
Hi everyone, currently using the Whatsapp customer service Trainline provides and hitting a brick wall, here is my situation:

I originally had a ticket for a direct LNER train departing at 19.33pm on Saturday 26th July which would go from London Kings Cross to Bradford Forster Square. I wanted to spend more time at the wedding I was at, so changed my ticket to the later 8.30pm train. I paid £9.40 fare difference and £10 admin fee. The ticket never loaded (I have a screenshot proving this), and I later got an email about 2/3 minutes later saying the 8.30pm train was cancelled.
When the original 7.33pm train came, I was allowed to get on due to the massive disruption that day and my ‘old’ ticket never even left the app. Weirdly, in the Trainline app, I also had another ticket, the same 7.33pm one, but instead greyed out with the message ‘refund processed’ which I think is their way of saying ticket changed? It was an advance single so it obviously wasn’t refunded.

This means however that I have paid £19.40, of which £10.00 was an admin fee, for a train I never got on and never received a ticket for. I requested a full refund for this amount from Trainline and wanted to make a delay repay claim against LNER for the cost of the original ticket.

For clarity, the train I got on in the end was one of the few trains running up from London the day the signals failed at Leeds, it was my 7.33pm train but it came an hour later, and terminated at Leeds so never got to my final stop).

I contacted Trainline, they say they can refund me £40.05 (original fare + fare difference) but not the admin fee which I think is ludicrous. They never gave me the changed ticket, clearly knew somewhat of the cancellation hence why my ticket was perpetually being created, and are saying the fee is non-refundable. They told me the tickets can take 20-25 minutes to be created, which I’ve never experienced before but okay.

I have a couple questions left, and my will to get that £10 is pretty much gone because am I surprised Trainline operate this policy, no..:

1) If I get this refund, I’m guessing I don’t need to make a delay repay request anymore? My original ticket has gone from the app but they provided it to me so I can refund it, but obviously that would only cover the original, cheaper fare, and I’d be pretty much getting refunded twice which I don’t think makes sense
2) Can I request a refund for the Uber I had to get from Bradford Interchange? I could no longer get the bus home by the time the train eventually got me into Bradford (I was allowed to get on a Northern rail service to Interchange, not Forster Square). I’m going to guess no but worth asking you train wizards.
3) Do I have any recourse for this £10 fee? Trainline told me they have no complaints team so I can’t even escalate this to a formal complaint.

Sincerely, a confused customer
 
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Watershed

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I contacted Trainline, they say they can refund me £40.05 (original fare + fare difference) but not the admin fee which I think is ludicrous. They never gave me the changed ticket, clearly knew somewhat of the cancellation hence why my ticket was perpetually being created, and are saying the fee is non-refundable. They told me the tickets can take 20-25 minutes to be created, which I’ve never experienced before but okay.
The admin fee is indeed non-refundable in principle - but that's assuming they actually process the change you have paid for! They should have given you your revised ticket despite the fact that your new train was then cancelled. Since they didn't do that, they didn't provide you with the service you paid for (the change from one train to another) - which is why you are due a refund.

1) If I get this refund, I’m guessing I don’t need to make a delay repay request anymore? My original ticket has gone from the app but they provided it to me so I can refund it, but obviously that would only cover the original, cheaper fare, and I’d be pretty much getting refunded twice which I don’t think makes sense
Really, Trainline shouldn't be refunding you the cost of the original ticket, as you did still use it to travel. They should instead be directing you to LNER, to claim Delay Repay. The fact that you might get 100% of the ticket as Delay Repay doesn't make it the same as getting a refund. A refund conceptually speaking involves returning a ticket you didn't use. Delay Repay is compensation for delays on a ticket you did use.

The likes of Trainline often refund tickets - even if used - when customers complain, as if that solves the problem. But as above, it doesn't really - and it can create more problems than it solves.

If you want to go about things properly you should clarify to Trainline that you weren't looking for a refund of the original ticket, but rather a refund of the change they didn't correctly perform. That being said, sorting out this mess through Trainline's appalling customer service and then (trying to) make a Delay Repay claim for the now-cancelled original ticket may be an exercise in frustration so I'd certainly understand it if you decided to leave things as they are.

2) Can I request a refund for the Uber I had to get from Bradford Interchange? I could no longer get the bus home by the time the train eventually got me into Bradford (I was allowed to get on a Northern rail service to Interchange, not Forster Square). I’m going to guess no but worth asking you train wizards.
You'd be entitled to alternative transport to your booked destination (i.e. Bradford Forster Square) if there were no more trains, but that's as far as the rail industry's obligations extend. They're not obliged to get you home, just to the place your ticket is to.

That being said, LNER may be more generous than they legally speaking have to be, and if you contact them and set out what has happened, they may give you a gesture of goodwill that at least partially covers the cost of your Uber - particularly given the scale of the disruption.

3) Do I have any recourse for this £10 fee? Trainline told me they have no complaints team so I can’t even escalate this to a formal complaint.
Trainline absolutely do have a complaints procedure. You can submit a complaint using this form, and you can escalate the matter to the Rail Ombudsman if you get a 'letter of deadlock' you're unhappy with, or after 8 weeks - whichever comes first.

Alternatively you also have the more 'nuclear' options of making a chargeback or bringing a claim against them in the County Court. The former would probably see your Trainline account banned, but given how awful their customer service is and the fact they charge booking fees that 99% of other retailers don't, perhaps that wouldn't be the end of the world...

For future reference, there are several retailers that wouldn't have charged you an admin fee for changing your Advance ticket, just the fare difference. These include CrossCountry (albeit this is basically just a branded version of Trainline's whitelabel site/app), TPE, Ticketyboo and Railsmartr. There may be others too.

The forum's ticketing site (a branded version of TrainSplit) will charge you a lesser fee of £5 per order, regardless of the number of tickets or passengers. TrainSplit was started by forum members and several of the people who work for its customer services are active on this forum so I hardly imagine you'd face the same kind of issue with them!
 

redreni

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I've no particular expertise qualifying me to say this, but it seems to me perfectly obvious that you cannot charge an admin fee when you have not performed the administrative task for which the fee was charged.

It's up to you how hard you want to fight this, but I am a very petty person so I would start off by going back and forth with them quite a few times in the hope they would get bored and refund the fee to make me go away.

If that doesn't work, publicly shaming them is a good thing to do, of course, so posting here is a good start on that front.

Other options might include making a chargeback on your credit card, if that is how you paid the admin fee. I'm not sure how that works when a charge is made and then partially refunded, so it might be worth checking with the credit card company about that, but hopefully it's as simple as you paid £19.40 to change your ticket, they didn't change your ticket, they've refunded you £9.40, you do a chargeback for the remaining £10.
 

vandoorn

Member
Joined
3 Jun 2025
Messages
9
Location
Yorkshire
Thanks guys for your replies! I’ve quoted your replies and sent back to Trainline, they are probably going to say something again like ‘it is non-refundable’ but I agree that it’s outrageous they didn’t point me towards a complaints procedure! For me, £10 isn’t the end of the world, but I think about others not as fortunate and that can be a week’s shop!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==

this is what they said to me in reply - i agree with the comments on this thread about how they shouldn’t have refunded me as i did tell them at the start that I was allowed to travel (and did) with the 7.33pm ticket still on my phone, and said I wanted to lodge a delay repay request so this is on them. At the end of the day, as long as I get the refund for the more expensive ticket, I will probably see the £10 admin fee as ‘hey i got a ticket for £10 as opposed to £40 in the end’, but the service is absolutely atrocious

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==

The admin fee is indeed non-refundable in principle - but that's assuming they actually process the change you have paid for! They should have given you your revised ticket despite the fact that your new train was then cancelled. Since they didn't do that, they didn't provide you with the service you paid for (the change from one train to another) - which is why you are due a refund.


Really, Trainline shouldn't be refunding you the cost of the original ticket, as you did still use it to travel. They should instead be directing you to LNER, to claim Delay Repay. The fact that you might get 100% of the ticket as Delay Repay doesn't make it the same as getting a refund. A refund conceptually speaking involves returning a ticket you didn't use. Delay Repay is compensation for delays on a ticket you did use.

The likes of Trainline often refund tickets - even if used - when customers complain, as if that solves the problem. But as above, it doesn't really - and it can create more problems than it solves.

If you want to go about things properly you should clarify to Trainline that you weren't looking for a refund of the original ticket, but rather a refund of the change they didn't correctly perform. That being said, sorting out this mess through Trainline's appalling customer service and then (trying to) make a Delay Repay claim for the now-cancelled original ticket may be an exercise in frustration so I'd certainly understand it if you decided to leave things as they are.


You'd be entitled to alternative transport to your booked destination (i.e. Bradford Forster Square) if there were no more trains, but that's as far as the rail industry's obligations extend. They're not obliged to get you home, just to the place your ticket is to.

That being said, LNER may be more generous than they legally speaking have to be, and if you contact them and set out what has happened, they may give you a gesture of goodwill that at least partially covers the cost of your Uber - particularly given the scale of the disruption.


Trainline absolutely do have a complaints procedure. You can submit a complaint using this form, and you can escalate the matter to the Rail Ombudsman if you get a 'letter of deadlock' you're unhappy with, or after 8 weeks - whichever comes first.

Alternatively you also have the more 'nuclear' options of making a chargeback or bringing a claim against them in the County Court. The former would probably see your Trainline account banned, but given how awful their customer service is and the fact they charge booking fees that 99% of other retailers don't, perhaps that wouldn't be the end of the world...

For future reference, there are several retailers that wouldn't have charged you an admin fee for changing your Advance ticket, just the fare difference. These include CrossCountry (albeit this is basically just a branded version of Trainline's whitelabel site/app), TPE, Ticketyboo and Railsmartr. There may be others too.

The forum's ticketing site (a branded version of TrainSplit) will charge you a lesser fee of £5 per order, regardless of the number of tickets or passengers. TrainSplit was started by forum members and several of the people who work for its customer services are active on this forum so I hardly imagine you'd face the same kind of issue with them!
regarding emailing LNER about reimbursement for the Uber - would I not get into trouble when I tell them Trainline refunded me for the entire
ticket instead of doing Delay Repay? I worry they will come back to me and say I travelled without a valid ticket or something like that and it just isn’t worth unboxing that can of worms for £7 :/
 

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Watershed

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Thanks guys for your replies! I’ve quoted your replies and sent back to Trainline, they are probably going to say something again like ‘it is non-refundable’ but I agree that it’s outrageous they didn’t point me towards a complaints procedure! For me, £10 isn’t the end of the world, but I think about others not as fortunate and that can be a week’s shop!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==

this is what they said to me in reply - i agree with the comments on this thread about how they shouldn’t have refunded me as i did tell them at the start that I was allowed to travel (and did) with the 7.33pm ticket still on my phone, and said I wanted to lodge a delay repay request so this is on them. At the end of the day, as long as I get the refund for the more expensive ticket, I will probably see the £10 admin fee as ‘hey i got a ticket for £10 as opposed to £40 in the end’, but the service is absolutely atrocious
They clearly don't understand the concept that their system might take payment but not issue the ticket. That's what you need to focus in on, I'd say. They have not provided you with the change you paid for.

It's an issue ticket issuing systems (TISs) face occasionally and something all TISs' customer services should know how to handle.

regarding emailing LNER about reimbursement for the Uber - would I not get into trouble when I tell them Trainline refunded me for the entire
ticket instead of doing Delay Repay? I worry they will come back to me and say I travelled without a valid ticket or something like that and it just isn’t worth unboxing that can of worms for £7 :/
Given that you told Trainline you just wanted to get a refund for the amendment they never performed properly, I think it would be safe to get in touch with LNER's customer services.
 

vandoorn

Member
Joined
3 Jun 2025
Messages
9
Location
Yorkshire
AN UPDATE!!! I am getting the money back!!!

the message that seems to of did it was:

'the admin fee is causally linked to receiving a changed ticket - if I didn't receive this, then what was the admin fee for? You cannot charge a service fee for a service you didn't provide. Trainline, who sold me the service of changing a ticket misled me. I'm entitled to a full refund for that service fee under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008'

all of a sudden the manager, who previously didn't exist btw, can look into it, and immediately grants me a refund and frantically apologises

its frustrating that I received replies such as 'as per the UK Rail Industry the refund is not possible', 'ticket creation takes 20 minutes' (irrelevant cause i never received the ticket), 'may I remind you Trainline do not operate trains, we only provide the tickets for the journey' (which proves my point), 'this cannot be claimed back', 'this was not a fault in our app, it was an immediate cancellation' rather than just having a contingency plan in place for where ticketing systems, which companies like Trainline rely on, run into these problems. just pure greed


i hope this is helpful for anyone in a similar position
 
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redreni

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Most organisations will only try and fob you off with nonsense for so long. Once it becomes clear you're not going away, they usually realise the more they dig in, the more ridiculous they're going to look. Depending what you're asking for, of course. Your mileage may vary.

I do think a lot of people give up when they're on the brink of getting a result, though.
 
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