Southern Rail - Impossible to get a refund for a ticket I couldn't use due to COVID

Graham38475

Hi everyone,

I want to talk about Southern Rail and my struggle to get a refund from them - in the end getting nowhere.

I have an annual train ticket running from Jan to Dec which cost £1040. In March the office was closed so I only used the train for just under 3 months. At the time I didn't know how long I was going to be affected by coronavirus. My company likes people going to the office so I thought after a few months I'll probably be back and Southern will just extend my ticket for the time I couldn't use it. 

Well more time passed and before I know it we are in November. There are only a few months left on my ticket with little chance of my office opening before it expires. I have not used 9 months worth of my ticket and those 9 months are worth around £760. I reached out to Southern Rail for a refund and they refused - copy/pasted their legal terms and said it's my fault for not requesting a refund straight away back in March. I escalated to the Ombudsman after receiving a deadlock letter and they said they can't help and referred my case to TravelWatch. Then TravelWatch came back and said they can't help either and if I feel like this is unfair I can contact my local MP. I haven't done that yet. I honestly didn't expect to have to fight so hard for what I feel is quite a simple matter and I'm feeling quite defeated at the moment.

At some point in time, I'm going to need to take the train to the office again when things start getting back to normal. It's going to feel rough paying for the train again knowing I have already paid for 12 months of service and only received 3. At the very least if they won't refund me then I would have expected to receive the 9 months of service I couldn't use. My current situation is Southern Rail have refunded me £41.40 of the £1040 ticket. That's after a £10 admin fee to process the refund. That's just an insult.

Is anyone else in a similar position to me? Has anyone else been struggling to get their money back because they didn't request a refund straight away? If I had known back in March what was going to happen then I would have requested a refund but I didn't know. I was never really worried about this much at the time as I trusted my train service to do the right thing and either refund me or extend my ticket for the duration I couldn't use it due to COVID. 

Thanks for reading.

Graham

[Deleted User]

Your only option is to cancel the ticket now if you don't feel you're going to be using it. You were still able to use the trains if you needed to, so the service has been there even if you didn't elect to use it. 

At least it's a cost you had already budgeted for, so you're no worse off than if you had been using the train.

Jeremy535897

My company likes people going to the office so I thought after a few months I'll probably be back and Southern will just extend my ticket for the time I couldn't use it. 

I reached out to Southern Rail for a refund and they refused - copy/pasted their legal terms and said it's my fault for not requesting a refund straight away back in March.

Unfortunately you made an assumption that turned out to be incorrect. The remedy was available back in March, and you chose not to pursue it.

McKneff

The least stressfull thing you can do for yourself is decide to put it behid you and move on.
You must realise by now that tour flogging a gead horse.

barbarawright

It actually says on the Southern website  that you can't get a refund on a season ticket  after 10 months and 12 days. Had you asked when you knew you weren't going to use it for a while, you'd have been fine. Seems reasonable to me (I applied  for a refund on my annual TFL card as soon as lockdown was declared  and got about 90%  of the unused part back) 
https://www.southernrailway.com/tickets/buy-tickets/refunds-and-changing-your-ticket

Potbellypig

Tough one to take but if you take the emotion out of it then they actually haven't done anything wrong. The trains were still running should you have wished to take them so the service was still provided. Unfortunately, you're going to have to take this on the chin. 

Dr_Crypto

It isn't their fault that you didn't use the trains. You could have requested a refund back in March for the ticket as soon as it became clear that you wouldn't be back in the office for some time. 

diggingdude

Sadly I think the trainlines are right on this one 

Sanne

Southern is right on that one - in the end, if you have a paper ticket, for all they know you could have taken the train every day so I can see why they wouldn’t refund retrospectively. 

Lurkingtoposting17

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/04/train-firms-to-allow-all-passengers-to-claim-ticket-refunds-remo/amp/

This website has been advising to sort this since the start of lockdown. In your case this is trying to lock the stable door long after the horse has bolted 

epm-84

Sanne said:

Southern is right on that one - in the end, if you have a paper ticket, for all they know you could have taken the train every day so I can see why they wouldn’t refund retrospectively. 

Even if it's an annual season ticket loaded to a smart card they won't be able to say for certain it hasn't been used.  Not all stations have automated ticket barriers and even the ones with them don't necessarily have them in use from first train to last train 7 days a week.