Some advice required on how to get a partial refund

[SAPhil]

Last week I booked return tickets between St Albans and Shanklin via Hovertravel using the Thameslink website. On the outward journey the hovercraft was cancelled all day due to the weather. I had to make my own way to the Island by another route and was told to claim back the Hovertravel part of my fare from the booking agent (i.e. Thameslink). I can't find any obvious way of doing this. Would anyone here be able to suggest the best way for me to proceed?

Thanks

Phil

 

[221129]

Last week I booked return tickets between St Albans and Shanklin via Hovertravel using the Thameslink website. On the outward journey the hovercraft was cancelled all day due to the weather. I had to make my own way to the Island by another route and was told to claim back the Hovertravel part of my fare from the booking agent (i.e. Thameslink). I can't find any obvious way of doing this. Would anyone here be able to suggest the best way for me to proceed?

Thanks

Phil

Have you tried just emailing/phoning/tweeting Thameslink? Would probably help.

 

[SAPhil]

Ideally I would like to email them but the website seems to do a very good job of hiding any possible email address!

 

[Merseysider]

You should be able to reach them at customerservices@thameslinkrailway.com

 

[paul1609]

try this https://www.thameslinkrailway.com/help-and-support/contact-us
"I would like to make an enquiry at the bottom of the page" and then "about a refund"

 

[mmh]

Personally I'd use the form. I can understand why email feels more direct but the online forms will inevitably directly insert your query into some helpdesk / CRM system, where it'll be logged and be a statistic reported on. Sadly that's far from guaranteed with corporate email systems.

 

[Merseysider]

Just to add that, if your travel was disrupted in one direction only, your partial refund will most likely be calculated at half of the difference between the through ticket and what you would have paid for the rail journeys only.

For example: St Albans City - Shanklin return is £82.20, minus SAC - Portsmouth Harbour return at £53.60 then minus 2x £4.80 Ryde - Shanklin singles = £19, which halved makes £9.50.*

If the replacement ticket you bought was more expensive than this, you could politely ask, as a gesture of goodwill, for the replacement fare to be refunded instead as a voucher or cheque, but they are under no obligation to do that.

*these amounts will be different if railcards etc apply

 

[tsman]

May not be a huge amount of help to the OP, but I had a very similar experience, except I used return leg of the Hovertravel ticket and used a different retailer (Trainpal). They ended up refunding the full ticket... guessing they had no clue how to process it.

As an aside, I found it pretty poor/shocking that Hovertravel didn't have any ticket acceptance with Fastcat...

 

[SAPhil]

Thanks for the replies. I've sent an initial email to customer services asking them the best way to proceed.

I was unimpressed with Hovertravel as well. Mind you the Fastcat service wasn't any use anyway - because of social distancing I would have had to wait (in a non-socially distanced queue!) for three hours. Ended up getting the ferry and then a bus.