Great Western Coffee Shop

I travelled from Oxford to Paddington on a train that arrived 41 minutes late, so I put in my claim for compensation. However it's been turned down, because it was less than an hour late. I checked the GWR web page; that burbles about different rules depending on which former train company your train would have been run by. So apparently if it was a former Thames valley link service (whatever that was), they pay compensation if the delay was more than 30 mins, but for a  former FGW train it has to be an hour delay before they'll pay.

This seems a nonsense. My train journey was only supposed to be 55 minutes long. Surely GWR should pay compensation for delays of more than 30 minutes for such a short journey? Have I claimed for the wrong train /company / region / webpage or something, please? What's all this former Thames Valley stuff, and how come Oxford isn't covered by that? Would Didcot be covered by that better compensation policy, please?

Honestly it's things like this that drive me nuts. In theory, there's a policy that means that passengers are protected from poor service by the company having to pay out if they underperform. But in practice, the system is structured so that in real life they actually almost never have to pay, despite a lot of delays.

I believe Delay/Repay is coming, which'll cover *all* delays, even outside the industry's fault, of over 15 minutes. Not sure when they have to introduce it.

The customer delay compensation on GWR is an antique scheme. Somehow it survives all organisational changes and manages to refer to services of a company that hasn't run a train for nearly 12 years. However, as I recall it all Oxford to London services originally came under the umbrella of FGWL, but things got more complicated later.

I would suggest the OP requests that the claim is looked at again, mentioning the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Everyone should be treated equally when it comes to compensation for delays on trains in Great Britain. Its really not on that GWR and the DfT continue to drag their heels over the introduction of the industry standard 'Delay Repay' compensation scheme.

'Delay Repay' should have been introduced by GWR in September 2016. But the franchise agreement was written in such a way to allow GWR to wheedle out of introducing it, passing the buck to the DfT. Ask the DfT why it hasn't been introduced and they'll refer you back to GWR. I know they will, I still have the correspondence from GWR and the DfT when I raised the issue in late 2016 with them both. Seemingly, neither side is willing to act in good faith for the benefit of passengers. Tells you all you need to know about GWR and the DfT.

The Franchise Agreement says:



The current, directly awarded, franchise 'start date' was September 2015.

Returning to my original point. Rail companies are bound by the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-rights-act-travel-amendments

In that article 'train companies' means 'rail industry', so don't be fobbed off if GWR blame Network Rail.

Thanks very much for the good advice.