Great Western Coffee Shop

Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook will have seen that (somehow) I managed to clock up a total of 7 hours in delays over a one month period.  Bad luck perhaps?

Today, I received my passenger charter refund for 0.5 void days, which worked out at 2.3% of the ticket cost.

But this got me thinking that the whole Passenger Charter concept, when compared to Delay Repay, really does nothing to compensate people who are actually delayed.

Firstly, I am assigned to a service group, regardless of which services I actually use.  In my case, South West Trains Mainline Group 2, but what if I use SWT or FGW Suburban services, as I often do.  Even when travelling on these services, I can be delayed for any duration, but receive no recompense.

Next, only peak services are included.  When I end up missing a connection from London at the weekend, because my inbound train has been delayed, there is no payment due, despite arriving over two hours late at my final destination and missing whatever I had planned to do there.

A third issue is that performance figures are calculated over the last 52 weeks, not the period of ticket validity.  For me, travelling for a short period of time on monthly tickets, the service last April is of no importance to me.  What matters is the performance when my ticket was valid.

Of course there are situations where many passengers will benefit from receiving a discount when there is no delay, however wouldn't it be better if only those who actually experienced a delay were compensated.

Would I be correct in stating that these types of discounts are being phased out in new franchises, to be replaced by Delay Repay schemes.

Yes, they are.  There was a DfT letter (I'll see if I can link to it in a bit) that said exactly that when the first Delay Repay schemes were brought in.  Of course it then puts the onus on the individual to claim journey by journey - there'll be no charter discounts on renewal, and presumably no void days either.

A couple of TOCs have changed to delay/repay mid franchise, I think SE might be one. Being of suspicious mind I wonder if they worked out they'd actually benefit financially?

Paul 

It's very likely that FGW (or more correctly Greater Western) will move over to Delay Repay once the management contract kicks in, in October. InterCity West Coast (aka Virgin) have moved onto Delay Repay as of 1st April 2013. That was a condition of the management contract agreed with the DfT.

Little comfort for SWT customers. Stuck in the middle of a franchise unaffected by the fallout from the ICWC franchise award fiasco.

I would assume that the majority of passengers will not claim, either because they don't know, can't be bothered or the fare is so small it is not worth it.

It is very much a shame for us, in many ways.  No chance of getting any changes where they are needed, e.g. the provision of on-board wi-fi and improved first class offerings (such as offering a hot drink on all services, not solely in the AM peak).

Going back to my original post, as a comparison, during my seven hour delay month I received ^11.40 refund.  Under delay repay (assuming 5.25 return journeys per week), I would have received approximately ^59.00.

Wi-Fi is being installed on the Class 444s soon, but that's obviously no use for a lot of SWT passengers using the rest of their fleet.

Passenger Charter also doesn't compensate those who are delayed as it looks at the final destination of the train and not where the passenger is travelling. I very often experience delays on the TransWilts, but am not compensated due to the "down-time" in Westbury and Swindon(?). By the time trains get to Southampton Central / Cheltenham Spa, they are then on time, having continued through the "down-time" to make up time.