Trainline - do not use! You are not protected against cancellation!

NickCoo

Living in France, I had a Christmas booked to see my UK children and family. I had to cancel, of course, as the France/UK border has closed due to Omicron. I had no problem being reimbursed for the French rail travel I had booked to reach Eurostar at Paris (SNCF), no problem to cancel UK hotels, no problem to cancel the PCR tests, but I booked the English rail travel using Trainline, who I now understand are a third party 'ticket tout'. Eurostar gave me an open voucher to rebook at anytime, but Trainline not so for the UK trips: the only way is to rebook a specific ticket at a later date. I'm still reeling from cancelling Christmas and I consider it unfair that they expect me to come up with new plans immediately.  After giving me a lot of false information (that I could move the dates and then cancel) and being admonished by a Trainline operator for using their website chatline rather than phoning ('it's all my fault', he said) I turned to the Rail Ombudsman - but they don't care about who sells the tickets, they only deal in complaints against the rail operators themselves. I tried the Resolver app but you can't complain unless you reside in the UK, it seems. Clearly I should have booked the trips directly with the UK rail operators to have a chance of getting an open voucher to be used up to a certain date limit, as I got with Eurostar; but this option is not open to me because I went through Trainline. When making bookings with Trainline, there is no way of taking out any form of travel insurance as far as I can see, unlike Eurostar and SNCF (French rail) sites. I have lost £350... the lesson here is, if possible, don't use the UK rail network, but if you have to, then book directly with the rail operators.

cx6

That is true of a lot of things and has been for a long time...

- book your holiday cottage direct with the owner, not through cottages.com or whatever

- book your flights direct with the airline and not eg a travel agent or flights bureau or lastminute.com

- you can safely book a package holiday anywhere as you are protected by ATOL

- pay with your credit card direct, not via linking it to Paypal etc

etc etc

elsien

Trainline are a third party seller but they’re not touts.
If you buy a ticket for a specific day/time then it’s cheaper but that’s the chance you take. In these uncertain times it’s probably better to pay more and get a more flexible ticket. 

soolin

Trainline gets mentioned quite a bit on here , I used to use it myself as it was quick and I had the app on my iPad, however I’ve now deleted it and book direct having actually bothered to read the T and Cs as suggested on here. I don’t actually know why I or anyone used trainline, it is more expensive in most cases than booking direct, you also have to pay a booking fee and you lose all the protections offered by train companies. The protection didn’t used to be a problem as most companies would not refund unused tickets, but many, (note - not all) have now bought in policies to take into account Covid issues. For me personally I think it was just laziness, I had an app and didn’t have to log into different train company websites. 

If there is one thing that I hope users of MSE have learnt during this Covid outbreak it is to book travel direct (or book a proper packaged tour via a reputable agent) and even then check the t and Cs about change of mind cancellations . A lot of people have been hit despite numerous warning threads, with issues around flights particularly . 

Westin

NickCoo said:

Living in France, I had a Christmas booked to see my UK children and family. I had to cancel, of course, as the France/UK border has closed due to Omicron. I had no problem being reimbursed for the French rail travel I had booked to reach Eurostar at Paris (SNCF), no problem to cancel UK hotels, no problem to cancel the PCR tests, but I booked the English rail travel using Trainline, who I now understand are a third party 'ticket tout'. Eurostar gave me an open voucher to rebook at anytime, but Trainline not so for the UK trips: the only way is to rebook a specific ticket at a later date. I'm still reeling from cancelling Christmas and I consider it unfair that they expect me to come up with new plans immediately.  After giving me a lot of false information (that I could move the dates and then cancel) and being admonished by a Trainline operator for using their website chatline rather than phoning ('it's all my fault', he said) I turned to the Rail Ombudsman - but they don't care about who sells the tickets, they only deal in complaints against the rail operators themselves. I tried the Resolver app but you can't complain unless you reside in the UK, it seems. Clearly I should have booked the trips directly with the UK rail operators to have a chance of getting an open voucher to be used up to a certain date limit, as I got with Eurostar; but this option is not open to me because I went through Trainline. When making bookings with Trainline, there is no way of taking out any form of travel insurance as far as I can see, unlike Eurostar and SNCF (French rail) sites. I have lost £350... the lesson here is, if possible, don't use the UK rail network, but if you have to, then book directly with the rail operators.

Yep.

If you make the decision to use an intermediary to book something you have to read and understand what you are buying and the conditions you accept at time of purchase. You also need to accept that you may pay extra if you later wish to change things. 

bagand96

Might be a long shot, but there's been a lot of disruption to the rail network over the festive period.  It will be worth spending some time on Realtime Trains to check that all of your booked trains did run.  Any that were cancelled you would be entitled to claim a refund for.

eskbanker

NickCoo said:

When making bookings with Trainline, there is no way of taking out any form of travel insurance as far as I can see

But surely there's nothing stopping you from taking out an independent travel insurance policy, which would seem a sensible thing to do when booking a trip involving multiple travel providers during a pandemic?