Like many people, my partner and I hop on a train to go to work. Sadly, that train is ThamesLink, which is run by Govia ThamesLink Railway (GTR).
The service is not cheap. A monthly pass from Croydon to London terminals will set you back £169.40. If you commute from Gatwick, it will cost you £269.20. Paying over £2,500 a year for the right to go to work is a lot of money for anyone. And that’s assuming that the trains are clean, on time, with seating available more often than not.
In recent weeks months, passengers have faced a horrendous commute due to the poor service provided by the Govia ThamesLink Railway franchise. The disastrous rolling out of the new timetable was an epic failure. MPs have already called for freezing fare prices due to the poor service. While the new timetable caused the most chaos, other factors from broken trains to replacement drivers not showing up were the root of significant disruptions.
Given how much you pay each year, it is important that you claim compensation when you are entitled to it as a result of a delay or cancellation. Below is a short guide on how to claim compensation with GTR.
What is Delay Repay?
Delay Repay is a national compensation scheme that most train companies use to compensate passengers for cancellations and delays. There may be some variations in how the scheme is run amongst train companies.
With ThamesLink (and Southern as it is owned by the same parent company), you may be entitled to compensation “for any delay or cancellation that causes you to arrive 15 minutes or more behind schedule, except where delays have been caused by planned engineering works.” As a side note, Virgin Trains require that your train is delayed for 30 minutes or more.
In its Passengers Charter, GTR explains that Delay Repay is “based on the time you should have arrived at your destination station, not the delay to any particular train.” The Charter further states that “if you’re late because a train is delayed en route we will pay compensation based on the time you arrive at your destination station.” I suspect GTR is trying to say the following: what matters is the difference between the scheduled time of arrival and the actual time of arrival of the train at the destination station. Presumably, GTR is attempting to avoid compensation should your train pick you up late but end up (miraculously) arriving on time at your destination. In practice, this is unlikely. Given that most trains have specific arrival time at each destination station, it is hard to imagine how the delay cannot be linked to a particular train.
How and when to claim compensation?
You may apply for compensation online or by post within 28 days of your delayed journey. GTR will respond to the claim within 20 working days. If the delay occurs October 1, assuming that October 1 is a Monday, you may not receive a response before October 26. This is almost a full calendar month. Therefore, based on my experience, I strongly suggest you fill out the compensation form when you are at the station or on the (delayed) train. You could also fill out the form as soon as you arrive at the office or at home. I would not, however, recommend that option: you wasted enough time as a result of a delayed or canceled train, why should this now penalize your work or personal life?
If you are claiming online, you will need to create an account and register. Below is a screenshot of what the standardized claim form looks like. Note that the information required may vary on the type of ticket you hold.
If you, however, prefer to claim by post, you will have to populate and mail by post a form, which can be found here. Below is an extract of the form (clicking on the form will lead you to the actual form on GTR’s website.
The online form is evidently easier to fill out than the postal form. GTR may be incentivizing passengers to claim online by making the paper version incredibly difficult and time-consuming to fill out. Imagine that this form must be completed for every single delay, within 28 days. Even if your claim is eligible, it might easily take another month before you receive a response, let alone compensation.
Unless you are using a Key Smartcard and presumably purchasing your ticket online, the website will not allow you to claim compensation unless you have uploaded a picture of your ticket. This means scanning or taking a picture of your ticket, emailing it to you and uploading it to the website. Not the easiest to do on an iPhone on a delayed train with patchy network service.
It is also worth noting the compensation methods. Bank transfers and cards are an acceptable compensation method when it comes to claiming online. However, if claiming by post, then you will receive a “National Rail Voucher” or a cheque. Filling this form could easily take at least 15 min. Then, you are asked to take further time off and go to the bank to cash a cheque. This is hardly acceptable.
How much will you receive?
Sometimes, a picture is truly worth a thousand words. Here is how much you can expect:
I understand that the various types of fares make it difficult to apply one compensation regime to all passengers. I also appreciate that the methodology is set forth on their website. Yet, it is still incredibly difficult to calculate how much you will get. Even if you could figure out how much you will get in compensation, is it still worth another 15 minutes off your personal time to run the numbers? Probably not.
From my experience, you can get around £5 or so for each claim approved by GTR. First, it takes forever to submit a claim. Second, if your claim is successful, the amount is incredibly low in light of the time that was wasted. Time is our most valuable resource and simply cannot be recovered. People missed important work meetings and school events because of the delays and cancellations. The least GTR could do is to simplify the compensation process. Yes, some people who are not eligible may receive compensation. But a quicker compensation process is the least that can be done to the other passengers who already went through a difficult commute. And not just once.
To be fair, GTR is implementing an Auto Delay Repay scheme for Key Smartcard holders. Whenever GTR determines that you are delayed, it will automatically generate a claim in your online account. You can review those claims and ensure that they are accurate. Unfortunately, this is only available to Key Smartcard holders.
Enhanced Compensation
Enhanced Compensation starts with a good intention: if you paid a lot of money as a season pass holder, then you should receive more because you suffer the most. The more you travel, the more likely you will suffer from the delays and cancellations. Sadly, those have been very common since the new timetable.
Enhanced compensation may be payable in addition “if a journey is delayed by 30 minutes or more on any 12 days in a business reporting period.” The periods are shown below:
Again, this seems incredibly complicated. Would it be simpler to grant enhanced compensation to anybody who was delayed more than 5 times in a calendar month? It is unclear why there is a need to determine specific periods. It seems somewhat arbitrary.
How to claim Enhanced Compensation?
If you are claiming Enhanced Compensation, you need to print and post a claim form. I could not find an online claim form and the website does not state that there is one. It is all paper-based. The form may be found here.
Below is an extract of the claim form:
In my opinion, this is where things get a bit silly. This form requires you to fill out the scheduled departure time and length of the delay for every single journey. This is incredibly time-consuming.
I queried with Thameslink whether this form can be used a single compensation for all journeys. Do I have to first fill out the standard Delay-Repay compensation form and then fill out a second form for the Enhanced Compensation? Or can I do everything through the Enhanced Compensation and also receive cash compensation as entitled under Delay-Repay? This would be incredibly tedious.
Below is Thameslink’s response on this issue. You do not have to claim Delay-Repay fist to then claim Enhanced Compensation.
If you are eligible, you will receive either a “2 day-return journeys for anywhere on the entire GTR network, valid for 12 months” OR “National Rail vouchers to the value of a single journey between the stations covered by your season ticket.” You will notice that there is no cash compensation, which leads me to believe that Enhanced Compensation is a separate compensation scheme in addition to the Delay Repay scheme. This would mean filling out two compensation claims if you are a frequent traveler and entitled to Enhanced Compensation.
Additional Compensation Scheme
The delays and cancellations were so bad that GTR felt compelled to implement a third compensation scheme. The Additional Compensation Scheme is designed to compensation season and non-season ticket holders most severely affected between 20 May and 28 July 2018. This period coincides with the rollout of the new timetable. For readers who did not travel on the GTR network during that time, imagine going to work with all trains canceled or extremely delayed during multiple weeks. The chaos meant that even the live information displayed on screens and online was completely wrong. Passengers desperate for information had to turn to Twitter. Late night passengers had to take taxis and then claim additional compensation.
Information on the Additional Compensation Scheme is available here. The additional compensation is being rolled out in phases:
Again, the scheme seems quite complicated as it distinguishes between Level 1 and Level 2 stations. Why differentiates passengers? Everybody suffered and it involves additional complexity in the treatment of claims.
We have not been contacted as of today but will let you know if we are. If so, I will update this post. I am eager to hear from people who have been contacted by GTR in relation to the Additional Compensation Scheme. If this is the case, please share your experience by emailing me at theenglishinvestor@theenglishinvestor.com
Leave a Reply Cancel reply