Understanding the GWR delay compensation policy

[MarkW]

GWR is not a member of the Delay Repay scheme, and instead has its own delay compensation policy (more details are in its passenger charter on page 16/30). GWR says "what we'll pay depends on which of our services you used" and splits its policy into 3 sub-policies:

• High speed services (former First Great Western)
• London - Thames Valley services (former First Great Western Link)
• Bristol Suburban, Devon, Plymouth & Cornwall, and South Wales - South Coast services (former Wessex Trains)

I'm trying to understand the rules used to determine which sub-policy applies to each GWR service. For some services (eg. Exeter to Exmouth) it's obvious, but for others (generally anything to/from Paddington) it's ambiguous. My specific questions are:

1. Is the policy selected based on the service the passenger was travelling on, or the stations at which they boarded/alighted? My understanding is that it's the former (ie. the service - so 2 different services between Paddington and Reading may have different policies).

2. What counts as a "high speed service"? Is it the "H" (High Speed Train) symbol in the timetable or something else? For example, what policy applies to the 12:21 PAD to 12:51 RDG (marked with an H)? How about the 12:50 PAD to 13:20 RDG (not marked with an H)?

3. For delayed "London - Thames Valley services", the GWR passenger charter says that "we'll compensate you for 50% of the cost of your tickets". Does anyone know if this 50% of the delayed leg, or 50% of the cost of a return?

4. Similarly for delayed "Bristol Suburban, Devon, Plymouth & Cornwall, and South Wales - South Coast services" over 2 hours, the charter says that "we'll compensate you for the full cost of your ticket". Does anyone know if this is 100% of the delayed leg, or 100% of the cost of a return?

I sent these questions off to GWR earlier this month but haven't yet had them answered, so hoping that we can crowdsource some answers based on past (successful) claims in the meantime.

Thanks,
Mark

 

[Muzer]

The split is basically along the old franchise lines, as fair as I know. I think this used to be explicit on the site, but was changed a few years back to today's wording. The former First Great Western operation (these days the ones booked to be operated by HSTs or 180s) is the "high speed service"; the former Thames Trains/First Great Western Link is the "Thames Valley services", and the former Wessex Trains is the "Bristol Suburban, Devon, Plymouth & Cornwall, and South Wales - South Coast services".

As for your other questions, I've no idea — I must say in a lot of cases when I've contacted GWR I've not received the correct compensation, though usually this is in my favour! So I doubt the compensation staff understand it either.

 

[MarkW]

The split is basically along the old franchise lines, as fair as I know. I think this used to be explicit on the site, but was changed a few years back to today's wording. The former First Great Western operation (these days the ones booked to be operated by HSTs or 180s) is the "high speed service"; the former Thames Trains/First Great Western Link is the "Thames Valley services", and the former Wessex Trains is the "Bristol Suburban, Devon, Plymouth & Cornwall, and South Wales - South Coast services".

Thanks for taking a pass at this. The passenger charter echoes your comment that the split is along the old franchise lines.

It's increasingly clear that the policy is selected based on the service being travelled on, rather than the boarding/alighting locations. So - a different policy would apply for a journey on an HST from Paddington to Reading vs a stopping service from Paddington to Reading.

Would you classify all of the GWR fast services calling only at Paddington/Slough/Reading/Oxford (ie. this timetable) as high speed services (ie. former FGW)? According to the timetable, some are HSTs (marked with an H), some are 180s (marked with a green dot) but some are neither - yet they all take roughly the same amount of time. Does GWR run anything other than HSTs/180s on that route?

 

[Cantab26]

Thanks for taking a pass at this. The passenger charter echoes your comment that the split is along the old franchise lines.

It's increasingly clear that the policy is selected based on the service being travelled on, rather than the boarding/alighting locations. So - a different policy would apply for a journey on an HST from Paddington to Reading vs a stopping service from Paddington to Reading.

Would you classify all of the GWR fast services calling only at Paddington/Slough/Reading/Oxford (ie. this timetable) as high speed services (ie. former FGW)? According to the timetable, some are HSTs (marked with an H), some are 180s (marked with a green dot) but some are neither - yet they all take roughly the same amount of time. Does GWR run anything other than HSTs/180s on that route?

This is a prime example of the nonsense that is the current GWR policy.

The old Thames Valley franchise (Thames Trains/First Great Western Link) ran stopping services between Paddington and Reading as well as local services between Reading, Oxford and Banbury, semifast services from Paddington to Oxford and services on the Cotswold line between Oxford, Worcester and Hereford.

As such, every through service from Paddington to Oxford in that timetable would in general terms fall under the Thames Valley provision, not the High Speed provisions. This is despite the fact that many of the services are operated by High Speed Trains.

GWR also runs Class 165/166 DMUs on these services, including longer distance journeys from beyond Oxford into the Cotswolds.

To summarise, the compensation provisions are not based on the stations you board and alight at. Neither are they based on the type of train on which you travel.

 

[Parallel]

I intended to travel on a former Wessex Trains service that was cancelled earlier this year due to a train fault. As a result, I was delayed by over an hour getting home.

Under the compensation policy for this journey, I should have had 25% refunded as I held a return ticket. I was actually refunded 50%!

I'm not even sure GWR understand their policy!

 

[Cantab26]

From previous experience with GWR, this is my understanding of how the various sub-schemes are applied.

I'm trying to understand the rules used to determine which sub-policy applies to each GWR service. For some services (eg. Exeter to Exmouth) it's obvious, but for others (generally anything to/from Paddington) it's ambiguous. My specific questions are:

1. Is the policy selected based on the service the passenger was travelling on, or the stations at which they boarded/alighted? My understanding is that it's the former (ie. the service - so 2 different services between Paddington and Reading may have different policies).

Correct. The compensation is based on the service you travel on, not the stations you travel between. Different services between Paddington and Reading would therefore be compensated differently (either Thames Valley or High Speed, depending on where the train originated or is going to).

2. What counts as a "high speed service"? Is it the "H" (High Speed Train) symbol in the timetable or something else? For example, what policy applies to the 12:21 PAD to 12:51 RDG (marked with an H)? How about the 12:50 PAD to 13:20 RDG (not marked with an H)?

Unfortunately, it is not that simple.

Insofar as I am aware, the service split is as follows:

• Bristol Suburban, Devon, Plymouth & Cornwall, and South Wales - South Coast services (former Wessex Trains)

Every service shown on this map, unless it is a through train to Paddington.

• London - Thames Valley services (former First Great Western Link)

Every service shown on this map, unless the train continues west of Didcot or Bedwyn.

• High speed services (former First Great Western)

Any service that does not fall under the preceding two categories.

As such, all services between Paddington and Oxford fall under Thames Valley, even if they are denoted by the High Speed Train symbol in the timetable.

3. For delayed "London - Thames Valley services", the GWR passenger charter says that "we'll compensate you for 50% of the cost of your tickets". Does anyone know if this 50% of the delayed leg, or 50% of the cost of a return?

It's not worded very clearly, but the other calculations are based on the delayed leg. This is how I have been compensated in the past when delayed on Thames Valley services.

4. Similarly for delayed "Bristol Suburban, Devon, Plymouth & Cornwall, and South Wales - South Coast services" over 2 hours, the charter says that "we'll compensate you for the full cost of your ticket". Does anyone know if this is 100% of the delayed leg, or 100% of the cost of a return?

100% of the overall ticket cost, rather than the delayed leg.

 

[Cantab26]

I intended to travel on a former Wessex Trains service that was cancelled earlier this year due to a train fault. As a result, I was delayed by over an hour getting home.

Under the compensation policy for this journey, I should have had 25% refunded as I held a return ticket. I was actually refunded 50%!

I'm not even sure GWR understand their policy!

At least the variation to the policy was in a favourable direction!

It probably costs them more to administer this ridiculous scheme than if they simply compensated everything on a mixture of the Thames Valley and High Speed sub-schemes:

Delayed by 30 minutes or more?
You get 50% of the relevant leg.

Delayed by 1 hour or more?
You get 100% of the relevant leg.

Delayed by 2 hours or more?
You get 100% of the full ticket cost.​

Much too simple, no doubt.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Correct. The compensation is based on the service you travel on, not the stations you travel between. Different services between Paddington and Reading would therefore be compensated differently (either Thames Valley or High Speed, depending on where the train originated or is going to).

That is how I understand it too, but I do wonder about times of disruption when many services are affected, not just one.

Say I am travelling between Bath and Bristol and an issue just outside Bath station causes every service to be an hour late. Some of the time, services between Bath and Bristol are normally frequent enough that you don't always have plan to get a specific train and can just turn up and jump on a service. As the journey is fairly quick, there isn't a massive time difference so there is no worry about waiting for the fast train (as there is on say Paddington to Reading). So what compensation to you get then if you just planned to get "a" train, not a specific high speed or local one?

 

[Cantab26]

Say I am travelling between Bath and Bristol and an issue just outside Bath station causes every service to be an hour late. Some of the time, services between Bath and Bristol are normally frequent enough that you don't always have plan to get a specific train and can just turn up and jump on a service. As the journey is fairly quick, there isn't a massive time difference so there is no worry about waiting for the fast train (as there is on say Paddington to Reading). So what compensation to you get then if you just planned to get "a" train, not a specific high speed or local one?

This is yet another example of how farcical the current compensation scheme is.

If the delay is one hour or more:

• If you used a delayed 'Wessex' service, then you get 50% of the single fare or 25% of the return fare.
• If you used a delayed 'High Speed' service, then you get 100% of the single fare or 50% of the return fare.

If the delay is two hours or more, you get 100% of the cost of the ticket regardless of which train you actually used.

It's a complete nonsense.

Of course, there's nothing to stop GWR from giving more generous compensation to everyone if they decide that it's too much faff to apply their own policy.

Obviously, if you elect not to travel at all then you are entitled to a refund under NRCOT instead.

 

[TUC]

Given that the current Great Western franchise was planned when created to absorb the old Great Western Link and Wessex Trains franchises, why was the franchise allowed to retain separate compensation arrangements?

 

[MarkW]

Insofar as I am aware, the service split is as follows:

• Bristol Suburban, Devon, Plymouth & Cornwall, and South Wales - South Coast services (former Wessex Trains)

Every service shown on this map, unless it is a through train to Paddington.

• London - Thames Valley services (former First Great Western Link)

Every service shown on this map, unless the train continues west of Didcot or Bedwyn.

• High speed services (former First Great Western)

Any service that does not fall under the preceding two categories.

As such, all services between Paddington and Oxford fall under Thames Valley, even if they are denoted by the High Speed Train symbol in the timetable.

Interesting - thank you! - so based on this, the "high speed service" policy has nothing to do with the type of train used for the service. Instead, it's effectively just a catch-all for the long distance services that run between Paddington and:

• Anything west of Didcot (ie. Cardiff, Swansea, Bristol, Cheltenham)
• Anything south-west of Bedwyn (ie. Paignton, Penzance)

I've taken some crayons to GWR's route map to illustrate in the attachment - does that look right?

Anyone with experiences that match/differ from this?

 

[CyrusWuff]

Given that the current Great Western franchise was planned when created to absorb the old Great Western Link and Wessex Trains franchises, why was the franchise allowed to retain separate compensation arrangements?

I suspect the official answer would be to do with average journey times.

Why should someone making a 20 minute journey from Slough to Paddington, or 25 from Exeter to Newton Abbot, have to be delayed by the same time as someone making a 2 hour journey from Cardiff to Paddington before they can claim?

Having said that, I'm suprised they didn't move GWR to Delay Repay as part of the direct award franchise.