TFL refund warning letter!!!

suewiththeblues

WHat a joke!
i have just recieved a letter from the TFL refund people. After learning that the refund system existed i claimed every time my tube was delayed. In total over 2 years i must have claimed back about £50 or so, all genuine.

The letter says that they have 'procedures in place to monitor integrity of the refunds system and has identified that i made a statistically unusual number of refund claims for delayed journeys. at this stage we have made no conclusions as to the reason why you made so many refund claims within such a short space of time. however i must inform you that we havedecided to defer the processing of any pending or future refund claims until the circumstances of these claims have been fully investigated'. our investigators looking into anomolous refund claims may wish to contact you with more detailed questions about your journeys. once we have completed our investigations we will bemuch better placed to know what action to take in response to your refund claims. we will also kknow whether the situation will require the involvement of any other agencies or processes' !!!!!! :eek: :mad: :mad:

you would assume that when you submit your refund form they check it at the time to see if there were any issues with the tube that day wouldn't you?! I am furious. i dont have a record of what my journeys were - there were so many and i just used to save the details on my phone the delete them once i had filled in the form online. Imagine persecuting me for their crap service!!! or maybe they do not want anyone claiming at the moment!

LinasPilibaitisisbatman

The refund system is there to offer compensation when delays cause real issues, not to act as an income source for !!!!! who nothing better to do with their time.

I am all for people using it if its significantly late and causes them real issues or financial loss, but trains etc do run late quite regularly, unless its majorly late then people should get a grip.

You should always factor time into your travel plans for such occurences

Crabman

LinasPilibaitisisbatman wrote: »

The refund system is there to offer compensation when delays cause real issues, not to act as an income source for !!!!! who nothing better to do with their time.

I am all for people using it if its significantly late and causes them real issues or financial loss, but trains etc do run late quite regularly, unless its majorly late then people should get a grip.

You should always factor time into your travel plans for such occurences

No, the refund system is there for when a tube service is delayed by more than 15 minutes. Full details here

ArsenalFC

LinasPilibaitisisbatman wrote: »

The refund system is there to offer compensation when delays cause real issues, not to act as an income source for !!!!! who nothing better to do with their time.

Moron, mind how you talk when you have no knowledge what the circumstances are. Being negatively presumptuous about people is a bad trait. It seems like you always have better things with your time by foul mouthing people - wow.

Back to OP, you shouldn't worry about letter if you are genuine in your claims. Perhaps make a note next time you make a claim to ensure you have all the details should they ask for it in the future.

anewman

Ask them how many services are delayed more than 15 minutes. Maybe mention freedom of information laws or whatever they are.

Wonder if you'd get away with sending them a letter telling them any further contact from investigators will be viewed as harassment and action will be taken under the protection from harassment act - inviting them to take you to court if they can provide evidence you have claimed refunds when a service has not been delayed. Also some sort of mention that if any attempt at preventing a refund under whatever rules apply when a service has been delayed will be met with court action to recover any costs and they will be expected to pay your court costs.

Probably wouldn't do you any favours as they'll no doubt think they're judge jury and executioner.

Neil_B

ArsenalFC wrote: »

Moron, mind how you talk when you have no knowledge what the circumstances are. Being negatively presumptuous about people is a bad trait. It seems like you always have better things with your time by foul mouthing people - wow.

Back to OP, you shouldn't worry about letter if you are genuine in your claims. Perhaps make a note next time you make a claim to ensure you have all the details should they ask for it in the future.

Can't really find the words to express how much I agree with that!!! Exactly what i wanted to say. - well, apart from the Arsenal bit, LOL.

I've been here a very short time but why am I seeing so many 'judgemental' posts without the facts? It's frankly really sad: Normally what people of low self-esteem do?

Neil_B

anewman wrote: »

Ask them how many services are delayed more than 15 minutes. Maybe mention freedom of information laws or whatever they are.

FOI Act 2000. They have 20 working days to reply.

suewiththeblues

LinasPilibaitisisbatman wrote: »

The refund system is there to offer compensation when delays cause real issues, not to act as an income source for !!!!! who nothing better to do with their time.

I am all for people using it if its significantly late and causes them real issues or financial loss, but trains etc do run late quite regularly, unless its majorly late then people should get a grip.

You should always factor time into your travel plans for such occurences

I was not using it as an income source you idiot. The reason i am posting is because they have a refund policy, which i claim on VALIDLY because their tubes were delayed. late tubes CLEARLY makes me late for work. :mad:

i no longer have a record of the journeys which in hindsight would have been the sensible thing to do

thanks to the people who actually posted USEFUL advice and sod the rest of you. i too am sick of judgemental posters on here

Altarf

suewiththeblues wrote: »

you would assume that when you submit your refund form they check it at the time to see if there were any issues with the tube that day wouldn't you?!

You assume wrong. Due to the volume of claims they receive, TFL decided that it would be too expensive to check every claim, and to just to pay any claim submitted without checking.

The only problem was that this and this then happened. You might say this was inevitable, but many companies choose to do this as the costs of checking can be more than the cost of the losses. For example Tesco.

However TFL obviously decided that they needed to do something, but without incurring huge costs they still couldn't check the huge volume of claims they get, so they appear to have put in controls to detect any abnormal number of claims. However if you have only claimed for 6 delays per year, they seem to have set the "abnormal number of claims" limit a bit low.

So now you have tripped the limit their system has now sent you a standard warning letter that they hope will scare off the fraudsters, and your claims will be looked at by a human being.

If you have only claimed for 6 delays or thereabouts per year, then I can't see that anyone will bother to go any further.

If you had claimed for significantly more than 6 delays per year, then I would expect that they will be going back through your claims comparing them against the records that they keep of any delays and also against your Oyster card if you use one. Only if there are a significant number that don't correspond to any recorded delay or your Oyster card movements, then I would expect that they would take further action. However if your claims were valid, no problem.

As for keeping records to justify a claim, if you have a PAYG Oyster you could keep a print off of the records from the Oyster online system whenever you are delayed, which will show when you "oystered" in at your origin and when you "oystered" out at your destination. However if you have a period travelcard on Oyster then I can't see that there is anything that you could keep that would prove your claim.

sarahg1969

It will be a good thing for the OP if a human being does look at her claims. Because they will see they are genuine. She has nothing to worry about.

suewiththeblues

I expect that when they DO check the claims against the journey times they will see each claim is genuine but i am still a bit freaked out at getting that threatening letter! :eek: all i was doing was exercising my rights!:money: