Rail travel, claiming a refund...

welshlad

Hi, I booked a train ticket online from Edinburgh - London for £80 with South West Trains around early November 2011 for travel on 2nd Jan 2012. The ticket was an advance one valid only on a specific train.

Between booking online and my travel date, I lost the card I used to book the ticket, so when I actually went to pick up the ticket from the machine the day before I travelled it wouldn't issue it.

I called SW Trains and they looked at my account and said I had to buy a new ticket at the station (for ~ £100!) and then to send that in to them to get a refund.

They have now told me that because the original ticket was an 'Advance' one, that I am not entitled to any refund whatsoever!!!

Is this right? Seems a bit harsh, especially as I was told originally I would get a refund, they logged into my account on the phone so must have seen it was an Advance ticket at the time...

Just wondering if anyone had a similar problem and what the outcome was?!

Cheers

Jeff_Bridges_hair

Its a struggle really with this as an Advance ticket has many restrictions and one of them is to make sure you have the card you paid with to pick it up and no refunds or an exchange for £10 admin fee and the price up to the next ticket.

What they could have done is opened up the ticket so it could be collected by any card as long as you held the ref number and new your itinery and so on which is possible for them to do.

Im guessing the best thing you can do is appeal to their better nature and tell them that you were informed that you could get a refund if you bought a new ticket rather then being given the option to use another card to get your tickets and see what they say.. may get a goodwill gesture of some rail vouchers. May not.

Hintza

You are best geting the tickets sent out. Do as suggested above and send copies (not originals) of your replacement ticket.

welshlad

Thanks for the replies, have sent off an email first to see if that gets anywhere...that'll teach me for trying to save the trees!!!!

yorkie2

When that happened to me, I went to an East Coast station (their staff are, in general, in a completely different league to SWT!) and they asked me to confirm my name, address, the details of the ticket, and proof of identity. They then printed the tickets for me.

I cannot guarantee it, but I suspect you may have had similar treatment at Edinburgh.

I always use the East Coast website and always collect my tickets at my local East Coast station, in the knowledge that if I have any problems, I will trust East Coast to sort it out and not blame "other companies" etc.