GWR’s compensation scheme is all delay and no repay

[whole diary]

[ChrisB]

From the Guardian's Money section on 11.02.17

My train from London Paddington to Plymouth was two hours late but I’ve been waiting months for compensation

I travelled from Paddington to Plymouth in October by train which suffered a two-hour delay due, in part, to circumstances beyond GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)’s control (a fatality on the line) but still worthy of compensation according to the terms and conditions on its website.

Arriving in Plymouth all passengers were invited to take a leaflet to claim compensation. I did so by post. A month later, I called customer service to follow up my claim and was told that, due to an office relocation, the address I had sent my claim to was six months out of date, but if I had copies of the tickets I could reapply online. I did so and got an email saying that they were receiving many calls and I would have to wait up to three weeks.

Four weeks later, I received an email saying that my claim had been rejected as the initial delay was caused by police investigating a death en route. I appealed, on the grounds that there were further delays subsequent to that, and pointed out that handing forms out to customers to facilitate applying for compensation gives the impression that compensation would be forthcoming.

Checking my phone records, I noticed that calls to its customer service centre (holding time averaged 20 minutes on the two occasions I used it)are charged, unannounced, at a premium rate. I pursued an email appeal of 19 December (they gave themselves three weeks again...) and got a reply saying the expected time for a reply is now eight weeks.

I’ve had enough. The service is either critically understaffed or deliberately designed to frustrate, or both. Whether this is policy or planning it is demonstrably unacceptable, and they should be accountable, especially in the light of complaints that you have already addressed and others I have seen online.

JL, London SW2


The nub of your complaint is the – we agree, wholly unacceptable – amount of time GWR has taken to respond, and our postbag is filling up with more along the same lines. The operator has recently moved its contact centre, but all mail is redirected from a Freepost address, routed via Royal Mail – which should have no bearing on the time taken for a complaint to be received.

The company also says its customer service number is not a premium rate line. Calls to an 0345 number are charged the same as a normal landline but, unlike 0845 numbers, they are also included in any mobile phone call bundle a customer may have. So if a customer’s monthly/weekly allowance of free minutes has been used up (as in your case) those calls become chargeable and the charge levied depends on the provider. For example, 3 charges 3p a minute, Vodafone 30p a minute and Orange 35p, so there is quite a range. GWR says it has worked hard to make sure customers are able to make contact and know how tobut adds that it has little control over mobile phone providers’ fees. Maybe time for a different charging system, then?

That aside, it says that when trains are significantly delayed it does its best to inform customers during the journey and to address their needs when they reach their destination. With only one eligible passenger in five claiming for compensation across the system, the UK^▸ (United Kingdom)’s rail regulators have demanded that operators do more to raise awareness of compensation rules – announcing that it may be available and giving out claim forms when a train exceeds the delay threshold to qualify.

GWR says that it was “sorry for the time it has taken our customer service team to work through this complaint and resolve it to JL’s satisfaction. We’ve recently moved our contact centre to a new site, bringing all our customer service work back to the UK. The move means some detailed responses are taking longer than we would like, and we are working with our new team to improve our response rates. Like any other business we strive to deliver the best possible service for our customers. When things do go wrong it is entirely in our best interests for customers to know how to contact us and what the arrangements for refunds or compensation are. While the customer’s initial delay was beyond our control we have offered a gesture of goodwill, which we hope will be with him shortly”. We gather rail travel vouchers are on their way to you.

We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number

So an 8 week is quite typical at the moment!

[t0m]

I'd be pretty chuffed with 8 weeks.. can't think of a single claim GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) has settled with me from Q4 of last year yet..!

[Tim]

I'd be pretty chuffed with 8 weeks.. can't think of a single claim GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) has settled with me from Q4 of last year yet..!

It is pretty tragic.  They used to be rather good with typically a sensible reply within a couple of weeks. 

[TaplowGreen]

Still taking 8 weeks apparently. Clearly nothing in place to clear the backlog.

[t0m]

Still taking 8 weeks apparently. Clearly nothing in place to clear the backlog.

Still awaiting my void day compensation from 21 November 2016. Apparently there is only one person who knows how to process these refunds and they have conveniently been out of the office every time I have called. No promise to call me back has been fulfilled yet.

[TaplowGreen]

Still taking 8 weeks apparently. Clearly nothing in place to clear the backlog.

Still awaiting my void day compensation from 21 November 2016. Apparently there is only one person who knows how to process these refunds and they have conveniently been out of the office every time I have called. No promise to call me back has been fulfilled yet.

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) Customer service is cancelled due to staff shortage......no alternative will be provided.

[trainer]

Apparently there is only one person who knows how to process these refunds ...

If that's true it's an appallingly bad state of affairs and must be a dereliction of duty in failing to train sufficient staff to provide efficiently the service advertised (i.e. compensation for delay).

If it's not true then a blatant lie is being peddled bringing the company into disrepute - well, even more disrepute on this specific matter.  If it's a sanctioned lie that's worse still.

Let's be charitable and assume that all the trained staff have left, or been promoted because they were so good at their job and that currently there is indeed only one poor soul left who is trying to cope with all the compensation claims while new trainees are recruited. One can but have sympathy. 

[TaplowGreen]

Apparently there is only one person who knows how to process these refunds ...

Let's be charitable and assume that all the trained staff have left, or been promoted because they were so good at their job and that currently there is indeed only one poor soul left who is trying to cope with all the compensation claims while new trainees are recruited. One can but have sympathy. 

This situation has been ongoing for months with the usual "Manana manana" assurances from GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)....it's not the poor soul(s)who are responsible, it's their woefully poor management who are accountable.

[t0m]

Apparently there is only one person who knows how to process these refunds ...

Well it was the person on the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) hotline who told me that! In 2015 they paid my season ticket void day refund by cheque. My 2016 remains outstanding. It was specifically the void day compensation that apparently only one person knows how to process.

Perhaps only one person manages the comms too, because despite the promises on the GWR web site that they contact season ticket holders to tell them how to claim void day refunds.. I've never had any communication - electronic or by post - to explain it. Am I alone on that score?

[Chris from Nailsea]

I'm possibly going to regret posting this, but ... 

All three of the administrators of the Coffee Shop forum will be attending a Great Western Railway Community Rail conference in Barnstaple on Friday 16 June 2017.

We will be meeting with a number of senior staff from Great Western Railway during the day, and will be able to ask them directly about any such issues.

This particular topic is one which I shall raise with Mark Hopwood, for example.

If anyone else has any GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) issues which remain unresolved, please do add them to the relevant topic here on the Coffee Shop forum, and I'm sure that either grahame, bobm or I will be able to give a suitable nudge to the appropriate member of senior GWR management at the conference.

[t0m]

That would be fab!

[grahame]

There will be a goodly number of the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) team, and goodly numbers of community and passenger group representatives at Barnstaple this week - with the opportunity and intent (amongst other things) to have questions / queries / difficult issues raised.   

I should probably "manage expectations" in that many if not most of the difficult issues are already known, and there's no magic wand shop in Barnstaple. However it is a good chance to get updates of the current status on things, to learn more about why they remain issues, and what is or can be done about them. And also an opportunity for the issues to be (re)raised so as to remind those people we are talking to that the matters really are important to those they effect, and probably won't just go away if overlooked / ignored.

Where specific case data is involved, all concerned have to be very careful with data protection / privacy. As a part of the community rail, a line is supposed to be drawn in the sand that states we don't get involved at an individual level with complaints; exceptions have been known where we're asked for advise or help - they tend to be either acting to pass things on to the right place, or providing explanations which can be independently candid.

[TaplowGreen]

There will be a goodly number of the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) team, and goodly numbers of community and passenger group representatives at Barnstaple this week - with the opportunity and intent (amongst other things) to have questions / queries / difficult issues raised.   

I should probably "manage expectations" in that many if not most of the difficult issues are already known, and there's no magic wand shop in Barnstaple. However it is a good chance to get updates of the current status on things, to learn more about why they remain issues, and what is or can be done about them. And also an opportunity for the issues to be (re)raised so as to remind those people we are talking to that the matters really are important to those they effect, and probably won't just go away if overlooked / ignored.

Where specific case data is involved, all concerned have to be very careful with data protection / privacy. As a part of the community rail, a line is supposed to be drawn in the sand that states we don't get involved at an individual level with complaints; exceptions have been known where we're asked for advise or help - they tend to be either acting to pass things on to the right place, or providing explanations which can be independently candid.

In the specific case of lengthy and unacceptable delays to resolution of compensation claims & correspondence no-one is expecting a "magic wand", just making good on the numerous assurances given over many months by GWR that the issue was being addressed and would improve-I remember being told this as far back as November. So far, no such improvement is in evidence. I will be very interested in Hopwood's explanation and strategy to address this.

[Bob_Blakey]

I would very much like to know GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)'s current view on the provision of 'reservation only' long-distance services on days when they know for certain that passenger numbers are going to be significantly higher than normal.

[grahame]

In the specific case of lengthy and unacceptable delays to resolution of compensation claims & correspondence no-one is expecting a "magic wand", just making good on the numerous assurances given over many months by GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) that the issue was being addressed and would improve-I remember being told this as far back as November. So far, no such improvement is in evidence. I will be very interested in Hopwood's explanation and strategy to address this.

Totally agree with you amongst posting members here - and that's probably somewhere around about 100 people in a week.  I wrote largely for our wider audience - Google Analytics reports some 2,500 people per week visiting the Coffee Shop, most of whom are only here very occasionally (we do have a handful of professional lurkers too).

Having raised and read on time to answer customer queries and compensation requests on prior occasions, I know that changes in the organisation of how these things are dealt with was far from as smooth as planned, and that generated a backlog which in turn has generated more of a workload with people chasing things up. Promises of "it will get better" have indeed been made, but when that improvement isn't seen by the customers, it makes it yet worse again; it makes it pretty darned hard to take future assurances as worthwhile until the situation is truly seen to improve.   But, yes, you / we need to keep asking to help keep it on the radar for attention.