Poor bus service. Consumer Rights Act 2015.

[whole diary]

[JayMac]

Having moved to Somerset, I'm now a regular user of Buses of Somerset service 54 between Taunton, Langport and Yeovil. I've also used services 29 (Taunton - Wells) and 77 (Yeovil - Wells) recently.

In the past week I've experienced 3 cancellations, one due to staff sickness, the others for unknown reasons. Those cancellations led to an hours delay at destination.

I've also experienced 3 delays of 30 minutes plus. A handful of other occasions of lesser delays. In fact only one bus I've caught out of 12 in the last 7 days was on time at origin and destination.

What do fellow forumites think my chances are of asserting my rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and demanding and getting a full refund of my Weekly Somerset Network ticket? Or at least pro rata payments for each affected journey.

Service 54 is, I'm told, joined with services 77 and 29 for operational reasons. Evidence from my own eyes confirms that - the same buses on the fleet are being used on these routes - I've noted their fleet numbers. I may just have been unlucky these past 7 days but I suspect there is no robustness to the operational requirements. That being, Peak Vehicle Requirement, vehicle allocations and staffing diagrams. If one of these three services has problems, all are affected.

[grahame]

... What do fellow forumites think my chances are of asserting my rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and demanding and getting a full refund of my Weekly Somerset Network ticket? Or at least pro rata payments for each affected journey ...

As that's posted on our public boards rather than in the "Frequent Poster Club", there is no restriction on members (and indeed guests) sharing the question and the background to anyone they might know who's employed in the bus industry and may be able to give to a better answer than our rail-biased experts here ...

[LiskeardRich]

Tozers solicitors did a feature on their website aimed at assisting bus operators but still relevant to this

http://www.tozers.co.uk/6240-2/

I assume you have a weekly/month pass rather than buying daily tickets? Otherwise it could be argued you were aware of the outbound journeys delay when entering the contract. Return legs would be easier to claim. Unfortunately the operator has little tracking so little proof of delays logged.