Great Western Coffee Shop

http://www.transportfocus.org.uk/research-publications/publications/rail-delays-compensation/

It would be very straightforward for GWR (as an example) to pay compensation automatically where an Advance ticket has been purchased via their website for a specific train which incurs sufficient delay or cancellation to warrant it, rather than customers having to go through all the rigmarole of claiming it.

Virgin already do

..but, playing devil's advocate,  how could they tell if the passenger had travelled and incurred a delay which would give them a percentage refund and some one who had decided not to travel and would qualify for a full refund under present t's & c's?

With the existing arrangement, you are supposed to send your ticket back with the claim. If the ticket has been checked onboard, it will have been marked. If not, then STAR machines can read whether a ticket has been through barriers. Where GWR would have problems is if there are no barriers or the barriers were left open.

If it were automated, you couldn't tell.

It is also advisable not to use the automatic barrier (if present) at the end of a delayed journey as the ticket may be swallowed. Staff then have to retrieve it. Not easy with some barriers that drop tickets straight into a hopper, instead of keeping the last few inserted in the mechanism.

There's also the issue of getting staff to retrieve. I've heard tale of folk being told "tough" when they've wanted to retain their ticket for compensation and not realised it may be swallowed by the barrier at their destination.

It's simple really, depending on your attitude to your Customers & Customer Service in general- you do something which benefits the overwhelming majority of customers, shows them respect & makes them feel trusted, valued & well disposed towards you and likely to become advocates for you, whilst accepting that a few will slip through the net and get something they're not entitled to, or you treat customers as dishonest, deceitful cheats who by default will look to make a quick buck at every opportunity......whichever you choose, you will generally find the attitude is reciprocated.

Agree with TG completely.  There are areas where a less lenient approach to fraud and deceit are required, but in the case of setting up a system of automatic refunds to advance purchase tickets (like Virgin West Coast have done) then it would be a very customer friendly thing for GWR and other operators to do.  It's the sort of thing that should be specified in franchise agreements so there's a consistent approach by all train operating companies.

For Advances, you can't get your money back for non-travel...it's wasted. So for an operator to offer auto-compensation is in your davour by assuming you did travel, with proof you did. Rather than you not travelling, and submitting a claim when you hear it was heavily delayed. Which would be fraud. So the customer gains.

There is no suggestion that auto-comp can be applied to any ticket other than Advances. It would be very difficult to do for turn-up & go tickets

Not quite. If your booked train is cancelled, delayed prior to departure, or your reservation  won't be honoured, and you decide not to travel, you are entitled to a full refund. That applies to all point to point ticket types, including Advance Purchase.

Sorry, for 'non-travel', I meant through traveller's choice on trains running normally

At least part of the reason why some people don't make a claim is that it is too confusing trying to work out who they should make a claim against, if their journey involves more than one train operator. Is there a way to work this out that is published somewhere (and understandable for most people)?

I quoted an example on another thread a couple of days ago. If GWR cancel a train (which is a direct service), are they automatically liable if you are late enough to be able to claim? Even though there was an alternative GWR train a few minutes later that then linked to another company's train that is slightly late and misses a connection, which is what actually makes you late? I imagine that GWR would claim that despite the cancellation, their alternative train was sufficient for you to not be late (and would have been if the other TO's train had been on time).

As far as I know it's always been the initial delay that stops you sticking to an acceptable itinerary to keep things as simple as possible, and to avoid the same going round in circles scenario we have with delay attribution.  Might not favour GWR in all instances, but they will end up gaining in some cases too.  If you send you claim in to the wrong TOC they will forward it to the correct one as far as I know, so it might take longer but you should get the appropriate refund.

Encouraging to see the percentage of claimants rising quite sharply, but it should still be a lot higher.

.......and just think of the administration savings if refunds were made directly wherever possible rather than having to manually process applications & send vouchers etc via Royal mail.......win/win in terms of this & customer experience  I'd say.

But could one be clear enough to passengers when you need to claim & when the auto-comp kicks in? Because you certainly wouldn't want pax claiming for an auto-comp ticket.....I think that's one of the delays. The TOC would need to be firing off an email very soon after the actual delay to confirm to the traveller that they don't need to claim.

A journalist investigating ...


I'm noting "whopping £6 million" in his letter and "third largest" hinting that GWR may have very serious issues and a huge financial compensation bill ...

But ...

6 million pounds, over 360 days and 750 passenger carrying vehicles works out at £22.22 per vehicle per day.  For an 8 car HST, that's refunding one peak return ticket from Chippenham to London for the entire train which doesn't strike me as a massive amount.   And as one of the larger franchises, I would expect the amount paid out to be one of the larger amounts, all other things being equal!
 

  ........certainly nothing like as "whopping " as the compensation GWR has received from Network Rail! (aka the taxpayer)

Are  you suggesting that the TOCs are making money out of NR's compensation? I don't think it's very much.

To know whether £6million is 'whopping' you would need to know what % of GWR revenue it is.
The revenue of First Rail (includes GWR and TPE) was £1.3bn in 2015 so £6m is probably about 0.6% of GWR revenue (I can't find any figures that show how the revenue should be split between TPE and GWR). So hardly whopping.

First Group Accounts can be found here http://www.firstgroupplc.com/~/media/Files/F/Firstgroup-Plc/indexed-pdfs/2016%20ARA/FirstGroup%20plc%20Annual%20Report%20and%20Accounts%202016.pdf (http://www.firstgroupplc.com/~/media/Files/F/Firstgroup-Plc/indexed-pdfs/2016%20ARA/FirstGroup%20plc%20Annual%20Report%20and%20Accounts%202016.pdf)

And does the £6m include the season ticket discounts for delays?

In 14/15 GWR received approx £55m from Network Rail for delays. Data available here http://www.networkrail.co.uk/transparency/datasets/ (http://www.networkrail.co.uk/transparency/datasets/). Incidentally TPE received £5m for the same period. 

Obviously GWR will have costs attributed to disruption: coach hire, staff overtime, etc. But I can't see how they can't be making a profit from this.

The First Rail profit (GWR and TPE) for 2015 was only £72m so it could be that a large percentage of the profit was made from delay payments.
If that is true do GWR have any incentive to work with or put pressure on Network Rail in reducing delays?

Well, the ORR have been known to step in & fine/require TOCs to otherwise spend money on improvements if their stats are abysmal....

Yes - and thanks to ray951 for quantifying it so succinctly.

Why shouldn't a public body in charge of keeping the rails working be compensating the companies using it?

The alternative would be higher costs from NR on the taxpayer, so we pay one way or another!

Does the average profit margin of a TOC of around 3% include these rebates from NR, or are they in addition to?

Will be included.

I think it's fair that NR cover the costs incurred by a TOC when a delay is attributed to them..........I think the question is whether the latter should be making millions of £ in additional profit based based on this compensation (paid by NR, aka the taxpayer) as it weakens or removes any motivation for delays to be reduced as Ray alluded to.

...............I wonder if GWR have to fill in a form, send it off and wait 6 weeks for a reply like the rest of us mere mortals? Do they get Network Rail vouchers I wonder???  ;)

|I bet it takes weeks for NR to pay up though!

Second thoughts - I doubt any money changes hands - TOCs are likely to receive a credit against their track usage charges.

The arguments will be fierce and complex, just like they are for delay attribution.

The ORR publishes quite detailed data on the franchised TOCs, covering income and the split of costs among various headings.

For 2014-15 GWR's passenger income was £882,425,000 and other income amounted to £74 million. TPE's passenger income was £212,526,000, Government support was £43,906,000 and other income amounted to £13,356,000

The document is called <gb-rail-industry-financial-information-2014-15.xlsx> but I haven't kept a record of the URL where I found it. Try searching the ORR's web site.

There may be later data available but I haven't looked.

So that's £6million in approx (old figure, probably more this year) in £882 million income. That's equivalent to 0.62% of revenue!!! Tiny, rather than small

The URL is http://orr.gov.uk/statistics/published-stats/gb-rail-industry-financial-information/gb-rail-industry-financial-information-2014-15  ;)

If profit is 6% of revenue, then 0.62% is 10% of profit - hardly tiny.

All the arguments as to whether or not it is fair though completely miss the point.  The point is that First and other bidders knew the scheme (and had a good idea of the likely compensation amounts payable) when they bid for the franchise and will have factored it in.  The only fairness issue is whether the franchise is operating under the rules both parties entered into or not.  To change the rules halfway would be unfair.

When the franchise terms are drawn up the relevant question isn't whether the rules are fair (because bidding for a franchise isn't compulsory they are agreements voluntarily entered into), but whether they provide the correct incentives to the correct parties to delivery what the government wants delivered.  This is why things like void day for compensation payments to passengers annoy me.  Superficially, it feels "fair" that First shouldn't have to pay out for a delay caused by bad weather (because First didn't cause the bad weather)  but fairness is not a relevant issue here.  The point is that if we want a network that is more weather resilient then you need to incentivise First and NR to make it resilient, and the way to do that is to make it more expensive to have a non-resilient system than a resilient system and the way to do that is to hit First and NR with penalties when there is weather-related disruption.

Of course there are ways to have a better network that doesn't reply to market pricing and a money-go-round.  There are, I think, good (political) arguments in favour of alternatives.  But given that we have a market driven network and a system for incentivising actors via compensation payments, then lets use it properly. 

Can't disagree with much of this.

NR however, is owned by you & Me & other taxpayers. What is the point in hitting ourselves in the pocket as you suggest? Better surely for the money to be invested directly in works to improve the railway?

And what can First do to improve resilience? Not much, and therefore no operator would accept being fined for delays outwith their control, and they're not.