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▸ ’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to follow up my claim and was told that, due to an office relocation, the address I had sent my claim to was six months out of date, but if I had copies of the tickets I could reapply online.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▸ ’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.
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