Delay repay reduction

[whole diary]

[Clan Line]

The point about the service you were on was I was going to check the actual timings for you to see where you actually stood on this claim - happy to still help if you share the date and times etc.
With this it will either explain the amount you got or give you a cast iron case for an appeal with facts

No problem:  Monday Oct 16th. The train we intended to catch was the 2023 from Romsey to Warminster (Cardiff) - it was cancelled. We caught next Cardiff train at Salisbury, having caught the local SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) service to there - which was warm and out of the gale at Romsey. The Cardiff train left Salisbury at 2142 and arrived at Warminster at 2202, according to my watch.

I did look at RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website), but by the time this saga had started to develop the relevant times were no longer there. What has annoyed me most is the attitude of GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) in apparently refusing to tell me why my claim was reduced. If the train we caught was actually one second early arriving at Warminster I cannot really complain - but why will GWR not tell me. Is it a State secret or are they frightened of being ridiculed for deducting £3 from my claim because (shock, horror !) their train was a few seconds early ?

[stuving]

This is reported on TRUST^▸ (Train Running System TOPS) (still visible on Liverail) as you suggest:
1F32 part-cancelled PMH-BRI^» (Bristol Temple Meads - next trains), due WMN^» (Warminster - next trains) 2102.
1F34 arrived WMN 2201 1 early.

The real point is that, given the next train on a route is often 15, 30, 60, or 120 minutes later, how is a delay of 15, 30, 60 or 120 minutes to be understood? It's hardly rare or surprising for the next train to be a minute or two early, and clearly that makes a negligibly difference to the passenger, so why is the system set up to refuse a significant fraction of such claims?

Automatic processing you'd expect to be dumb and be driven by the official reported timings. If it's been programmed with thresholds of 15, 30, 60 and 120 minutes these marginal refused claims have to be seen as happening "by design". So, why?

[grahame]

Automatic processing you'd expect to be dumb and be driven by the official reported timings. If it's been programmed with thresholds of 15, 30, 60 and 120 minutes these marginal refused claims have to be seen as happening "by design". So, why?

££££?  A bit of programming with <= rather than < can make a real difference

[stuving]

Automatic processing you'd expect to be dumb and be driven by the official reported timings. If it's been programmed with thresholds of 15, 30, 60 and 120 minutes these marginal refused claims have to be seen as happening "by design". So, why?

££££?  A bit of programming with <= rather than < can make a real difference

Exactly - you have to provide any cleverness in rules (which get programmed); the processing is still dumb. So you can say early arrival is ignored, but that is probably not enough. Some interval services have a bit of variation in the intervals, so if the next train is around 60 minutes later - but some are 58 or 62 - I'd still call that an hour's delay.