My first experience of using London Midland's on-line rail delay claim form hasn't been a great one. They get 8/10 for the speed of response but 3/10 for the response...The paper form has fields for scheduled arrival time, the exact length of delay and an explanation. The on-line version on the London Midland website does not...
A couple of weeks back there were problems on the line resulting from a train breakdown. I was on a different train than usual, taking one of the fast services with a change at Leighton Buzzard (first stop after Euston). Unfortunately, the delays meant that I arrived at Leighton Buzzard about 20 minutes late and then had to wait another 40 minutes for the first train stopping at Bletchley. The result was a total delay of 55 minutes.
I've always used the paper form for the claims (the £4 in rail vouchers might be paltry but it's the principle that counts!) but this time I decided to claim online. The letter from London Midland came through within 10 days which was great but I wasn't pleased by the content. They had checked and reckoned the delay was less than the 30 minute minimum. Hmmm...
Without any information from the form regarding scheduled time of arrival, the actual delay and the reason for the delay, it looks like they've just looked up the report for the train that I left London Euston on, ignoring the fact that my destination was Bletchley and that train doesn't call there. As Queen Victoria apparently used to say, "we are not amused..."
The letter did invite me to ring or email Customer Service if I disagreed with their decision on the compensation. I have picked up the phone and asked that:
- They reprocess the delay claim.
- They review the online form and match the fields to those on the paper form.
- They put a bit more effort into checking the details of a claim so that they pick up where passengers might change trains between their departure and arrival stations.
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Update:
ReplyDeleteLetter received from London Midland customer services: "I apologise for the initial error made in the calculation of your compensation. As you may be aware, the online form does not allow customers to add comments which results in us having to rely completely on just the in house computer systems. I therefore did not realise that you had to change at Leighton Buzzard and have since recalculated your claim based on this."
London Midland have to be applauded for their honesty, but the above raises two questions:
1. Will they now amend their online form?
2. Will they put more effort into investigating a claim before rejecting it as invalid?
I get the distinct impression that they are understaffed so our only hope is probably with (1).