TFW Delay Repay - train too busy to board for Advances only?!

[Bletchleyite]

Just put in a Delay Repay claim with TfW for yesterday's chaos. This started with being unable to board the 2-car 11:24 Chester to Birmingham (due to the WCML traffic using it instead of which I was one - it left full and standing with perhaps 20-30 people left behind), though in the end I went away for lunch at 'Spoons and came back for the booked 4-car 13:xx instead...which promptly had me stuck at Shrewsbury for several hours. (A RRB was put on fairly quickly, probably by way of using the standby coach for the planned Crewe/Stoke rail replacement, but was inadequate for the number of people waiting - once a train did show up the masses quickly came back up from the station front).

Fortunately (!) the delay to the actual service was well over 2 hours so that should be a full refund anyway, but I note that TfW's Delay Repay site says that "unable to board" is payable for Advances only. This seems wrong to me. Are they breaching the rules, or is their scheme different from the others being in Wales rather than England?

 

[gray1404]

I too noticed this on their form recently. It is an error on the form. It should not say Advances Only and indeed delay repay for being unable to board applies to walk up tickets as well.

 

[rocrat]

I don't think I've seen any written confirmation on this, but I think once you get to customer relations, most TOCs are not hugely unreasonable on this.

EMR have paid out before now on a similar basis (2 car 158 during planned engineering works on alternative route = overcrowded train with no standing room). It helped that EMR guards are very good at marking their trains as full and standing.

XC have actively advised me to wait for the next train (and to claim delay repay if it subsequently applies) instead of boarding an overcrowded train and claiming under their seat guarantee.