Supplier/credit Card Joint Liability For Poor Service.

Flying_Demon

Hi Folks,

I understand that when you buy goods using a Credit Card and they turn out to be faulty or misrepresented the liability is jointly between the supplier and Credit Card Company and it is possible to claim against the Card Company.

However what happens when purchasing a service from a supplier? I commute to work using a very poor train service. There are frequent delays to and from work (half to one hour most days on a advertised journey time of one hour). On some work days as a result of severe problems I have been unable to get in to the office and as I work freelance for myself I have lost significant income. I am often unable to get a seat on the morning train due to the numbers travelling and short train formation and am forced to stand, the air conditioning in the summer on most carriages fails and is never fixed and all in all it is a miserable experience with no ready means of appropriate redress. It is possible to claim fixed compensation for delays but the amounts offered are derisory and of course each individual delay has to be notified directly and processed and I'm sure most commuters like me just don't have the time or inclination to always do this.

I pay for a monthly season ticket by credit card. If I cannot get sufficient redress from the Rail Company is it possible to contact the Credit Card Company and request say a 50% refund on the cost of the monthly season ticket due to delays and poor service? I'm more interested in pursuing from the point of view of making the Rail Company listen and improve their service as they just hide behind the 'Conditions of Carriage' at the moment.

Thanks.

jonesMUFCforever

You could I suppose but then the train company could argue that your ticket is no longer valid or even bar you as a customer.

MPH80

You'd struggle with this one.

Although the CCA 1974 does give joint liability to the credit card company even for services supplied - they are only liable if the service isn't delivered.

The train company has sold you a ticket to allow you to travel between point A and point B. If they failed to deliver on that service - and they refused to compensate you - you might have a cause.

However, a lack of seat and lack of air conditioning is not failure to deliver that service - unless you were explicitly promised those features of your journey.

There's more detail here:

http://www.timeshare.org.uk/cca74.html

M.

galileo

The other point is that the card company is only jointly liable to the extent that the supplier is. Bearing in mind that all tickets are issued subject to the published conditions of carriage, which specifically set out compensation mechanisms, you are bound by those.

Any arguments which you raise seeking to deviate from those mechanisms are likely to fail, as such arguments could be easily rebutted by the conditions, which form part of the contract with the rail company.

The bottom line is that you don't have to use the service, however if you choose to, you must agree to be bound by the national conditions of carriage, which are of course non-negotiable.