Transport User Voice – April 2018 – Case study

28 March 2018

Mr K purchased first class tickets from Bristol Temple Meads to Inverness to catch a ferry. The last leg of his journey was with Caledonian Sleeper and on boarding the service he was told it was running late.

Mr K’s journey was delayed by two hours and, prior to arriving at Inverness he was given a claim form. Due to the delay, Mr K missed the bus he intended to catch to make his ferry, so he took a taxi. In the taxi, it became clear he was not going to make the ferry departure, so he arranged to meet the ship at another port.

Mr K spent the following six weeks at sea and he posted the claim form when next in port, but it was rejected due to it being received four days out of the 28 day claim time.

Mr K was only claiming for a refund on his train ticket, not the taxi, ferry ticket or overnight accommodation, so he was very unhappy with the outcome as it was out of his control that he was unable to submit the form in time.

Mr K contacted Transport Focus to see if there was anything we could do to help. We argued that Mr K’s circumstances should have been considered as four days was not an excessive amount of time and they should have refunded his train tickets. We also asked that Caledonian Sleeper consider providing a goodwill gesture for the inconvenience caused to Mr K when he tried to resolve the matter.

Caledonian Sleeper reviewed the case and agreed that it should have been dealt with differently and refunded the full cost of Mr K’s ticket, £422.80, as well as offering a £30 voucher as a goodwill gesture.

Mr K was very happy with the outcome and we hope that Caledonian Sleeper will in future use discretion when enforcing policies.

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