Denied refund from Southeastern

SianGrace

I recently applied for a refund for my weekly travel ticket as I received a notification telling me to self isolate. I'd only used the ticket for two days. 

This is their reply:

"Refunds are calculated based on the amount of travel already taken, rather than what’s remaining. This is due to the way in which Season ticket pricing is structured, and how refunds are calculated. As you’ve travelled using your Season ticket for two days, I must deduct this from the cost of your ticket. See calculation below:

£13.60 (Weekly cost) – £10.40 (2 x Anytime Day Return) = £3.20

We also deduct £10 as an administration fee as per the National Rail of Conditions Travel “29.2. In such cases, a deduction from your refund will be made in the case of part-used Tickets, calculated on the cost of the journey(s) actually made. An administration charge may also be made, which will not exceed £10 per Ticket…”

As you can see from the above calculation, there is no refundable balance remaining on your Season ticket."

Does this seem fair to you and is there anything I can do to get a proper refund or do I just need to suck it up?

kuratowski

What Southeastern are saying about the conditions of travel is correct: they are allowed to charge a £10 administration charge for any refunds.  So obviously on a ticket that only cost £13.60 in the first place, the £10 fee will absorb most, if not all, of any potential refund.

Nevertheless, it's worth noting that your weekly season ticket of £13.60 is only about 2.6x the daily fare (£5.20).  So this does mean that in any week where you use it for the full 5 days you are effectively getting almost half your journeys for free, so it's really great value in a normal week - hopefully some consolation.

Ballard

If you're using trains covered by the TfL Oystercard then it would be worth looking at your option of using a contactless card in future as that is capped daily and weekly* so isn't more than buying a season ticket.

*My information is now a couple of years old but I'm making an assumption that things haven't changed.