Whilst my daughter was abroad she had asked me to book rail tickets to allow her to spend 3 full days doing research at the National Library of Scotland, in Edinburgh. She lives in Aberdeen so the plan was to Edinburgh first thing on Friday morning, then to ours at Bedlington in the evening, back to Edinburgh Saturday morning, return to ours Saturday evening, and finally to Edinburgh again Monday morning and back to Aberdeen Monday evening. 6 separate journeys using 4 companies, but following the atrocious weather over the weekend, 3 of the services, each with different companies, were either significantly delayed or cancelled completely. So I spent today doing the delay repay claims. This will be a great opportunity to see how quickly each company responds. So far, Scotrail are in the lead with the most straightforward application process, responding within 3 days to confirm the claim is accepted, and promising the money within a further 10. The other companies have only provided auto-acknowledgements so far. Let’s see if Scotrail can keep that lead or will they, like their trains, experience a further delay allowing one of the other companies to overtake? I’ll post results here. Incidentally, why 10 days? Someone needs to tell the train companies about the banks’ “Faster Payments” service, which promises the money in your account within 2 hours.
