Rail ticket refund

Bugs789

Hi all,
Last year I discovered a site called commuter club which allows you to purchase a train season ticket and then pay it back in monthly instalment. This was perfect for me as I don't like having to worry about buying tickets and it's just taken each month.

For the last 6 months it's been great until lockdown hit. They emailed me say the rail industry doesn't allow you to pause a ticket as you can get a refund. So on the 7th of May I requested the cancellation of my ticket as my employer has advised they don't expect offices to open until next year now. As the direct debit for May was taken on the 1st I was expecting a refund of Mays payment of 134.99 minus 6 days at the very least. The website indicated that refunds for the corona virus would date back to March so it was either going to be two payments or one refunded whichever I would be happy with.

I received notifications of my refund today which came to the princely sum of 72p! I have spent most of the evening trying to figure out how they got to that figure and I have no idea even if they added a fee it would still be more than that. I don't think they have manned phone currently due to lock down but what can I do now is it simply just email them back and wait? It's just so wrong they had the money and I having used the service. Any advice would be appreciated 

TSx

Annual season tickets are generally priced for around 10 months worth of use - refunds are calculated based on what's tickets would have been if you'd purchased them for the time you used (so it's not a pro-rata refund). It looks like with CommuterClub, the refund is used to pay off a loan which will include interest which may reduce it further.

What date did the ticket start and end?

davidmcn

Leaving aside the Commuter Club layer of complication, have you checked what the relevant amounts would be if you funded the ticket yourself? The refund on a season ticket isn't necessarily going to be a straight pro rata proportion, it will be based on what you would have paid for a ticket of the duration up to the cancellation date, minus an admin fee. We can't tell from what you've said whether the amounts make sense, I think you'd need to tell us what the route was and the dates of the ticket.

Bugs789

The tickets start date was 1st November 19 to 31st October 20

sheramber

https://www.commuterclub.co.uk/covid19

How is my refund calculated?

TSx

If you can find the cost of a weekly ticket for your journey, or let us know the route, you can calculate the cost of travel between 1st November and 17 March - it will be 17.54 multiplied by the weekly cost. This should equal the amount you have paid so far, plus the refund you have been given.

Commuter Club don't charge an admin fee but the interest may complicate things.

Bugs789

Hey all,

so, the cheapest anytime weekly return ticket is 8.20, which is essentially what my season ticket is.

what I dont understand is why im not entitled to the final months payment which was taken on the 1st via direct debit and I received the cancel notification on the 7th. In my head that should be the £134.99 monthly payment minus the six days

TSx

I still don't know what the weekly price is but I think the most likely thing is they've taken the last used date of the ticket as 7 May - in this case, the refund calculation would seem to be roughly correct, because it is not a pro-rata refund. Assuming a weekly cost of 8.20*5 = £41, the cost of a ticket 1st November to 7 May would be £41 * 23.94 = £981.54 - this is more than you have paid so far (7*134.99=944.93) - but the cost a weekly ticket should be at least a little bit less, and last years price would have been slightly lower which would account for the difference.

Either way, I'd go back to them and ask them to clarify what dates they're basing it on. If you stopped using it on 17 March, they should be able to see this and backdate the refund to then.

FleurBorowski

I couldn't claim anything back  from th 17 march 2020 because my ticket ended within 7 weeks.You can only claim for the first 30 something weeks