Claim under Consumer Rights Act?

double0

Hello all!


I've been a commuter into London for nearly 16 years on what was South West Trains, now South Western Railway (SWR). The first 14 and a half years were great, but since the franchise moved to South Western Railway the service has been abysmal. There are constant delays and cancellations (and I mean pretty much every day). One look at their Twitter feed will show you that the vast majority of their customers are not happy at all.


I have claimed for every delay via Delay Repay which on my current season ticket has amounted to about £150. However (and I apologise for my nerdy record keeping here!), I have kept a record of each and every journey and on average have had a 5 min 38 sec delay on each journey (pretty hefty considering that is over 335 journeys). My overall delay currently stands at 31 hours 28 mins, which equates to 11.56%. The £150 I have so far received on this season ticket (I'm nearly at renewal time) equates to about 3% of the cost.


Under South West Trains, season ticket holders were given money off renewals for days deemed void, 5% if punctuality fell below an agreed level and 5% if reliability fell below an agreed level. And it was all automatically taken off renewals. Under SWR, Delay Repay has to be manually claimed every time (and chased as they frequently reject it), and there is no season ticket deduction for punctuality and reliability (although one look at their figures will tell you they are failing badly on both fronts).


My question is this - can I make an additional claim to SWR citing that their current level of compensation in no way reflects the delay and disruption they are causing their passengers? There have been so many strike days in the last few months as well (SWT always managed to avoid them) which passengers cannot claim for, despite a heavily reduced service. I was thinking maybe under the Consumer Rights Act. I always purchase my season ticket on a credit card.


Many thanks for any help

giraffe69

Can't answer your exact question but I don't think that your assertion that "the vast majority of customers" are dissatisfied with SWR is true. I travel via SWR (but not every day) and I think that their service is better. I have claimed twice for delay repay and been paid both times without problem and punctually. There are frequent shortish delays near Waterloo but this seems a network rail not SWR issue.
The strikes are irritating but IMO the nonsense talked about "safety" is absurd and the guards are on a losing wicket here. It reminds me of the dispute on BR about the second person in the cab in the 70s and the dockers disputes when containers removed some of their jobs. They just wish to stick to old restrictive practices.

Exile_geordie

They now work under a different structure to SWT as they had to under instruction by the DfT so delay repay is all you get now.