Should passengers be made more aware of compensation for delayed journeys?
 

I think yes.

Lots of rail companies seem to have different regulations.

For example Northern Rail will compensate you if their service causes you to be more than an hour late at your final destination, including missed connections.

GNER also use one hour but don't include missed connections.

Central Trains and Transpennine Express use 30 minutes even though the length of their journeys are generally shorter than Northern Rail's.

I personally wish I had been made more aware as I didn't realise that I was entitled to about £10 compensation off Virgin Trains and £4.50 off Central Trains until I no longer had the tickets.

Also keeping your tickets sometimes causes a lot of bother leaving the station as at stations like Leeds and Liverpool Lime Street, they try to take single/half of return tickets off you as you leave the station.

Has anybody looked at the back of the old BR tickets and read the terms and conditions of travel? I mean the old pasteboard ones not the ones looking like credit cards we have these days.
Bring back the old style bus tickets as well providing a nice young 'Clippie' collects the fare.
John (G)

The problem with putting terms and conditions on the back of tickets is that different rail companies have different ones and sometimes tickets issued are valid on several different operators such as Stockport to Manchester Piccadilly which would be valid on Northern Rail, Central Trains, Arriva Wales, Virgin Trains and Transpennine Express.

I do believe there is something in the passenger charter about this? Usually in my experience if you have a serious delay the train crew will notify you that u could be eligable for componsations. I was on a central service last august when we hit a tree we were delayed for over 2 hours the gyard got every last passenger details. We were then contacted by central who gave a cash refund to all passenegers and a free journey to anywhere on there network. Not bad considering it was not there fault.

The problem is that there are so many different passenger charters for different rail companies.


That hasn't happened in my experinece. Central trains didn't inform me that you are eligible for compensation if you are delayed by 31 minutes.

With the Virgin Trains incident I should have checked. I didn't think I was entitled to compensation because the problem was overhead wires being down, but apparently while some companies wouldn't compensate you for that, Virgin would. In this case the train was due to terminate at Birmingham but was being forced to terminate at Derby because of the delay and the conductors were busy finding out how many people they were for Birmingham and informing them about the replacement bus arrangement, rather than informing other passengers about compensation claims for the train being delayed by 125 minutes.

I got this at Swansea, didnt even expect it, I thought it would pass throigh the machine but the guy never gave it me back, luckily all journeys were on time so no need to complain, but still you have made a valid point.

What you must all have noticed is that a lot of minutes delay is actually caused by the customer,(as passanger is considered non PC nowadays), with the kissy kissy by by at the train doors as the conductor is trying to close the doors for departure, I see this at many stations when working the Inverness sleepers.

I was told a few years ago when the Safeway was running the delay cost for that train was £450 per minute and £900 per minute for a train carrying Royal Mail but these sort of prices did not stop NR delaying us for a £60 per minute sprinting machine

Les

Have you noticed an improvement in timekeeping since customers stopped jumping out at intermediate stations for a quick smoke?;)

The way I see it is with the smoking ban in Scotland it seems to have got a bit worse as, as soon as the train stops there is a minotity who think that a quick puff is warranted, If it was me the doors would be shut and the train would be off leaving them on the platform.
Before someone jumps on and says that they should'nt be smoking there anyway, I think First Scotrails policy is that its okay to smoke on a station as long as you're out from underneath the station canopy.

Les

That's interesting Les.
Here in England (and Wales) smoking is banned EVERYWHERE on stations, not that some smokers take any notice of it.:(

A train would never be more than 30 minutes late due to passengers taking a long time to board the train.

I find that with some Northern services that are run by 4 carriage trains the conductor is still checking tickets when the train arrives at the station and it takes him 2 or 3 minutes to get to the end of the train and open the doors after the train has stopped.

Yes I've noticed that myself.
I can, to some extent, appreciate why the driver doesn't usually close the doors but why can't he/she open them? The driver is the best person to know if the train has safely stopped.:confused:

On some trains particularly 142s I think the driver would have to leave the cab to open the door, so it wouldn't be time saving on the less busy trains.

I was implying that, on multiple units, the necessary switch should be placed in the driving cabs to enable the driver to unlock the doors. Where this isn't already the case I can't see it being a particularly complex or costly modification to make, even on a 142.
In mainland Europe the doors on similar trains are opened and closed by the driver aided by nothing more than a rear-view mirror.

On some MerseyRail Class 507 and 508 trains it's like that. Conductors are not present on every train and there are no open or close buttons by the door. If conductor(s) are present then they open or close all the doors, otherwise the driver does it.

Compensation from VWC and GNER
 

When I was living & working in N. London, I once travelled from Watford Junction to Edinburgh. It was in late August 2001, and I planned to get a VWC train leaving WJ at about 1345. It transpired that something had derailed in/around Wembley, preventing anything arriving at or leaving Euston (except the DC trains). The scheduled train eventually turned up 90 minutes late, but as we sped through Milton Keynes, the guard came round handing out leaflets explaining how to claim compensation. I used it and got a £42 voucher back on an £85 ticket, which I used on a GNER train a month later. For 2 years after that, I regularly (but legitimately) claimed compensation from GNER and they willingly coughed up. However, I had to get a form from the Kings Cross ticket desk - they were never volunteered on the train nor by staff wandering about the station. One thing fascinated me at the time - EVERY compensation voucher I received was to a value that was a factor of £21 (£21, £42, £63, etc). In the 2.5 years I used GNER, they compensated me a total of £231.