Passenger Voice April 2016: Passengers’ experiences of delays and compensation
04 April 2016
Why don’t people claim compensation for delayed trains?
That’s what we asked when trying to understand rail passengers’ experiences of delays and claiming compensation. We carried out some exploratory work in this area in 2013 and now want to see if and how things have changed for passengers.
Working together with the Department for Transport and the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) we are surveying around 8000 rail passengers. We are interested to learn more about passengers’ awareness of their rights to claim compensation, their experience of the claims process and what they think about current compensation schemes.
We plan to publish this research on our website in summer 2016.
Following the Which? super-complaint passengers will be pleased to see the ORR has put forward proposals to making claiming refunds quicker and easier. We know that too many passengers are put off claiming due to lack of awareness or knowledge of how to claim.
We will work with the rail industry to help it take these proposals on board and build back passenger trust. In the longer term, we know that passengers expect the process to become smarter and automatic, taking the onus off them to have to claim in the first place with automatic Delay Repay systems in place.
