Govia Thameslink Annual Season Ticket Refunds

brownis1

Hi, I followed your excellent advice back in March and applied for a refund of my annual train season ticket.   Was initially met by needing to go to a station to get refund, but they were all closed, issue cited was that I bought it from there, so could only use the website if you bought through that.   Eventually, they put a form up to complete for those who bought from a station, this had to be completed and sent back with original ticket - did this end of March.  After 4 weeks I got a confirmation email from Govia/Thameslink saying that i was entitled to refund, however, they would require a card number and that they would call to get the details if I provided them (again) with a phone number, did this immediately - oh and they were charging me £10 for the privilegde.   After another 2 weeks, eventually got a phone call, had to go through all the details again over the phone (even though they called me), and they took the card details and said that the refund would be paid.   Here we are, in the 3rd week of May and still no refund.   I can only contact them electronically to chase this, and get the usual 'we'll get back to you in 2 weeks time but might be longer.....'.....this is utterly unacceptable.   So essentially, they are clearly putting processes in place to ensure that they hold onto the money for as long as possible and delay refunding what has already been agreed is a valid refund.
I would be very interested to know if others are also experiencing similar joy - because I suspect that this is a great game of being able to generate vast revenues by investing their customers money for as long as possible - imagine if we all did the same and actually didn't pay - we'd be fined.   In my case this is several thousand pounds, if this is a wide scale issue, it has to point to something bigger going on.

pjfm

My daughter was told she could not apply for a refund as she bought her £2,000 annual ticket at the station.  She did not realise that a form had been put on-line for refund applications so she has just kept her ticket (unused since 20th March - now 20th May) Her work is re-opening any time now so she will need that ticket to get to work (if the train stops at her station and there is space on it)  Is there any way she can reclaim 8 lost weeks of fare-payment?  Are claims still being accepted?  Should she send in the ticket and try to buy a new one?