Annual season ticket refund, worth it or not?

Sarah1210

Hi,
My husband has been told to stay off work, until told otherwise, due to coronavirus as he travels by train. His place of work is still open but only with staff who live locally at the moment. He has no idea if he'll be off for a couple of weeks or months, his annual train pass costs a little under £1000 a year (this started mid November). Is it worth getting this refunded and buying a new one when he starts again? I'm guessing it would be if he was off for a month, I just really can't get my head round it for some reason and just was to double check I'm not being a bit thick! 😂 (I know you don't get a pro rata refund). Thanks for any advice! 

Sarah1210

I've dithered for a week already 😐

Aylesbury_Duck

We'd need to know what the refund terms would be from the rail company.  To make the calculation, we'd need:

Start date of season ticket
Terms of the refund (is it pro rata, is it weighted, were there any free months included, do they refund complete months, etc)
Date he'd apply (presumably any day now)
Exactly what he paid
What a new ticket would cost

With all of that, it would be easy to work out the "breakeven point" - the time he'd have to be off work before a refund/repurchase becomes worthwhile.

benjus

Generally speaking you will lose out by about half the cost of a weekly ticket for every month since the season ticket started. ("lose out" meaning the difference between what you will get back and the pro-rata cost of the season ticket so far). AIUI an annual ticket is 40 times the cost of a weekly ticket, so that means he would be about £56 (plus any rise in cost of the ticket) worse off if he cancels the ticket now and immediately buys a new one. So if he's not travelling for more than about 3 weeks (not sure if that's from when the refund is requested or from the last time the ticket was used - is it an electronic ticket?) then it's worth cancelling it.

ic

I refunded a £1000ish ticket after three months and two days.  They kept £270 of it - which I felt was fair.  They also backdated the refund to the last time I'd used the ticket, which was a week earlier.  You should be able to call up and ask, and they'll confirm the amount to be refunded before you commit to it and go ahead, so you can decide what to do.