Train late again? Frustrated commuter sets up app to make it easier to claim Delay Repay compensation

Train delays are so frequent on some lines that commuters simply want to forget all about them by the time they get to their desk. 

But they could be missing out on an estimated £80million in compensation, as Britain's rail networks offer generous rebates to those that arrive at their destination 15 minutes late or more under the national Delay Repay scheme.

What puts them off is that they have to keep a note of what train they travelled on and how long it was delayed, then remember to go online, submit evidence and fill out forms to make a claim. There is also a 28-day deadline. 

Now, one disgruntled train traveller is so fed up that he has built an app to make claiming easier.

Chris Hull, 33, moved to Didcot five years ago, and commutes into London four days a week for his day job at an asset management company.

But at the end of last year, he realised he wasn't claiming everything he was entitled to for train delays.

Since then, he's been working on building RefundMyRail, an app designed to make claiming simple for time-pressed commuters.

He has made back around £380 in delay compensation since the start of this year. 

Hull says: 'RefundMyRail came from my own struggles. It's mainly targeted at people who have a regular commute or a season ticket.

'It'll make you aware you are delayed, and walk you through the steps.

'A lot of people don't know how much you can claim - or they find a difficulty in claiming money back as they forget the details.' 

He has this year set up applied research company Tacit Labs, under which RefundMyRail sits, alongside two co-founders.

How does it work? 

You simply enter the train you usually take to commute, for example Reading to London Paddington, and choose as many as three time slots to monitor.

The app will then watch these time slots and let you know when your arrival is delayed. It tracks the train and analyses the delay to see how much you could be owed.

This is then sent to your phone via a push notification, which will tell you exactly how late your train arrived and what percentage of your fare you could claim back.

Commuters rushing into the office may soon forget when they get on with their busy jobs, but this is designed to take the stress and administrative headache away from claiming.

Through the app you can click to claim via the operators. You typically have 28 days to claim, and you'll need a photo of your physical ticket or PDF of your e-ticket.

You can let the app know when you have submitted a claim. 

If you don't, you'll get a notification five days before the 28-day deadline comes to an end to make sure you don't let any money you are entitled to slip away.

How much delay repay compensation could you be owed? 

There are nine different rail operators which pay when a train is delayed, but rules vary.

For nearly all operators, a 15-minute delay is the minimum needed to trigger compensation.

The exception is LNER, which operates on the East Coast, as it only pays out when a train is 30 minutes late.

The other eight operators run Delay Repay 15, the national scheme's most generous form.

A 15 to 29-minute delay triggers a 25 per cent refund on a single ticket, and 12.5 per cent on a return.

For delays of between 30 and 59 minutes, it's a 50 per cent reduction on a single and 25 per cent on a return.

Between one to two hours, you'll get all of your single fare back and half of a return.

But more than two hours and the cost of your entire ticket is refunded, even if one leg of the journey wasn't affected.

It means in practice, if you buy a £50 return ticket and the inbound leg of your journey is delayed by 45 minutes, you get £12.50 back.

For a season ticket, the operators assume you take a set number of single journeys for each ticket to work out how much you are entitled to.

Individual amounts may seem small, but over the course of a year compensation can really stack up.

For example, take an annual season ticket from St Albans to London St Pancras, which costs £4,588.

If you have one 15-minute delay every week, you'll get back around £113 every year with delay repay. That's enough for a meal out for two with a bottle of wine.

One 30-minute delay every week and you're in for a £227 payout every year, which could chip away at the cost of a holiday.

The worst offender for delays at the moment is Avanti West Coast, according to RefundMyRail's analysis. 

It shows one in five trains in the last 11 days have been late enough to claim compensation.

On the other hand, just one in 40 trains on each of Southeastern – which serves Kent and south east London – and Greater Anglia were late enough to trigger Delay Repay.

Some 381 of 12,900 trains were late last Sunday, says RefundMyRail, the worst of which was a Gloucester to Tiverton parkway service which was 137 minutes late.

Disgruntled commuters can sign up for the pre-release of the app now via the RefundMyRail website, refundmyrail.co.uk, while the official release is expected to be in December.

How long does Delay Repay take? 

It typically takes ten days for a Delay Repay claim to be reviewed and then approved, but this can be longer in certain circumstances.

One of the most common causes is incomplete evidence, such as missing ticket photos or booking references, or a vague memory of when you actually arrived, according to RefundMyRail.

Send everything first time to minimise the chance of a delay.

Complex fares such as season tickets can cause delays, as can verifying a new bank account or card.

And a huge disruption can clog up the claims system, which means it will take longer for your claim to be reviewed.

For example, there may have been a bad storm that has severely hit several train lines.

If the claim has stalled, first chase your operator's delay repay team, citing the reference you were given when you made the claim.

The delay might be down to a simple mistake, such as a missing detail, which should be easy to fix.

If you still don't hear anything or believe you were unfairly rejected, you can complain to the operator.

If it's still unresolved after 40 working days, or you've received a 'deadlock' letter from the operator, you can go to the Rail Ombudsman.