GWR compensation

Sun 5 Mar 2017, 21:56 (last edited on Mon 6 Mar 2017, 19:04)

Have recently received separate cheques (several months after the complaints were made) each for £4.25 (I'm not kidding!)

Still awaiting compensation for Thursday 16th Feb when the 11.05 was cancelled (no alternate transport provided on the grounds that the last time a replacement bus was booked it arrived an hour late "as there are no bus services based in Charlbury - therefore it could be read it was indirectly Charlbury's fault!)

The situation came to a head when the next train did not arrive as scheduled and was either due to be heavily late or likely to be cancelled!

Being already considerably late for work I didn't stick around to find out and my retired Mother (who was at a play centre looking after 2 of my young nephews who were running riot as 4-5 year olds do) had to ditch their plans to take me into work in Oxford. This cost my mother petrol, a McDonalds for her and the children (the bribe as the children didn't want to leave the play centre!) and obvious inconvenience and stress. Personally it lost me 1.5 hour's pay and a lot of undue stress and also my employer to be a man short for 1.5 hours (losing them potentially a lot of retail sales - particularly with it being half term at the time).

In life unexpected things happen however this could have been handled much better. I understand this had been a knock on effect of an earlier 7 am train being held behind a signal in a station. GWR had plenty of time to arrange alternative transport, but chose not to causing inconvenience all round and loss of earnings. I hope they are proud.

Sat 4 Mar 2017, 10:52

Long delays in GWR paying out compensation in the past few months result from a decision to bring back handling of claims from India to the UK.
There were a lot of problems over correct payments being made when the work was handled in India, because of differences between the compensation scheme terms for former Network South East/Thames Trains routes - including the Cotswold Line - and the terms applied on the rest of the GWR system, with a lot of appeals being made when initial claims were incorrectly turned down. That's not to say that mistakes weren't also being made under the previous UK operation, they were, but not so many in my experience.
It has taken some months for the new team in the UK to get up to speed and I believe the extra sums on top of the initial claims are in recognition of the often very long delays in paying out compensation, though they finally seem to be clearing the backlog.
The Great Western area will switch to a new system - Delay Repay - when a new franchise is let, currently scheduled for 2019. Delay Repay is already used by a number of other train operators and pays out for any delay of more than 30 minutes.

Tue 28 Feb 2017, 15:16

It seems that compensation to Charlbury residents is all happening at once. After four months thinking nothing would happen, last week I received a cheque to cover a week's season ticket into Oxford.

Tue 28 Feb 2017, 12:08

I got twice the cost of my ticket after a longer wait!

Mon 27 Feb 2017, 13:28

After a week of smaller delays culminated in an hour-long delay in mid-November returning from Oxford, I lodged a claim just to see if they'd take any notice. I received a cheque this week - for an arbitrary amount (£10) rather than the cost of my ticket (£7.30).

Mon 27 Feb 2017, 12:35

On 24 August, I had a horrendous journey back from Paddington. It involved a train late from London, made to change at Reading onto a train with poor air conditioning on one of the hottest days of the year. I was lucky to get a seat and then when people were standing packed like sardines the train waited in Oxford for the arrival of the train we had been told to leave at Reading!
I wrote in and got no reply or acknowledgement so sent another. I had a reply in November asking for my tickets and then last week, 6 months after the journey, got a cheque!
Is this record or just normal for GWR?