Passenger Voice November 2015: Case study
30 October 2015
Mrs R was travelling from London Kings Cross to Halifax along with five other passengers. Part of their journey was on a CrossCountry service. The group experienced issues with the air conditioning on their carriage and found cause to complain and request compensation from CrossCountry for their tickets.
In its response to Mrs R, CrossCountry apologised for the incident and explained that had the train manager been alerted they would have been moved to another more comfortable carriage. However if that was the case the group would have been split up. Mrs R did not find this suggestion acceptable as she has severe epilepsy and it would not have been safe for her to have been separated from her fellow travellers. Her claim for a refund for the £159.20 tickets was also refused.
Mrs R appealed to Transport Focus, we talked about her case to CrossCountry. Initially the train company were only willing to offer £13.20 in Rail Travel Vouchers for Mrs R alone. However when we pressed the matter further it agreed to issue compensation to all six passengers. Mrs R was then happy to send these passengers’ details to CrossCountry and the claim has since been processed. Mrs R is now very satisfied with this outcome and is grateful to Transport Focus for achieving a positive outcome.