Train delays – official MSE guide discussion

MSE_Kelvin

Hello there,

After eight years of active service, the original Train delays thread is now closed, so I've created a new one here specifically to discuss the following guide:

Train delays

If you've used the guide, how did you find it? Was it useful in getting your money back? And do you have any tips you'd add? Let me know below.

Cheers,

MSE Kelvin

HowardFisher

The big headache I’ve found when claiming refunds for train delays is where the journey is over several train operating companies. I should be able to claim for the whole journey, but none of the Delay Repay forms seem to cater for this. Particularly difficult is how to express the case where the whole journey is delayed more than an hour (full refund) but no operator’s delay is that much - maybe operator one’s train was 15 mins late, but that missed a connection on an hourly service, so a cumulative delay of over an hour from just one operator’s 15 min delay. 

I have successfully claimed for this by heaping all the details in the first operator’s Delay Repay form and when they send an auto response prompting for more details I write a carefully worded fully detailed explanation of why I’m claiming for a greater delay over the whole journey. Whilst this works for me, I’ve spoken with friends who’ve clearly been fobbed off with less by for example filling out each operator’s form for each journey segment. Improving the MSE delay repay guidance for multi-segment journeys’ delays might help everyone. 

MilesT6060842

HowardFisher said:

The big headache I’ve found when claiming refunds for train delays is where the journey is over several train operating companies. I should be able to claim for the whole journey, but none of the Delay Repay forms seem to cater for this.

Recently needed to do a Delay Repay (actually an abandonment claim) for a combined Southeastern and Southwestern journey. The delay was on Southwestern (ex WAT), but ticket sold by Southeastern (machine at CHX). The Southeastern site seemed to support entering the whole journey including Southwestern, and was speedily paid.