Who gets the refund?!

[frostyfingers]

I'd be interested to know what you think on this! I occasionally go into town for work and I buy my ticket and then add it to my invoice at the end of the month (self employed). This time my train was delayed and I was 30 minutes late, it didn't impact on any meetings and I covered the time at the end of the day. I have applied for & received the Delay/Repay refund which is around £30.00. The full ticket price is just over £100.00.

My question is: I had to drive 15 miles to a different station & pay for all day parking (not much to be fair, only £5) - do I invoice for the full ticket amount and keep all the refund - after all it was my car, an extra drive at the beginning and end of the day and I wouldn't normally pay for parking, plus the hassle. Or do I deduct some or all of the refund from my invoice?

I had thought to deduct the full amount of the refund from my invoice but a few friends think I should keep some or all of it.

That depends on your work I imagine. Mine wouldn’t be impressed if a staff member kept it, although would refund for the parking and petrol mileage to get there.

Um no, you get the refund- as I understand it you made up the lost time at work? So your workplace was not inconvenienced. You were! You had the delay, you had to sort out the additional logistics, and you effectively had to work unpaid overtime. You get the refund!

Depends
Where you being paid for the "delayed" time? If so I think the company should get the refund as you were still on the clock.

However if you aren't paid for travelling time then you should keep it as the inconvenience was solely yours and that's what the refund payment is for - an acknowledgement of inconvenience caused. Your company still got the same amount of hours worked out of you so they weren't inconvenienced at all by the delay.

It's not clear whether the reason you had to pay for parking was because of the delay or not? I.e because the train was delayed did you have to drive to another station?

If you have a ticket for the full amount I'd claim for that and set the refund against the extra costs you incurred. The £30 was for your inconvenience really, the ticket price was £100.

i imagine it might be tricky to put in the expense claim any other way, if the ticket shows £100 on the receipt they won't be able to match it to a £70 claim easily. Plus claiming for train and car parking and mileage would probably seem like double claiming (they'd expect one or the other) so probably would create problems.

It would be different if the full ticket had been refunded.

I hadn't thought about the payment being for the inconvenience, it was certainly a pain. I'm not paid travelling time, only the hours I'm in the office.

@1offnamechange where I usually park is free, but because of the delay I had to use a different station and pay, so the expense was incurred as a result of the delay, plus the cost of the extra 30 miles travel in total.

I think I'll just mention it to the person I work for and see what they say, then at least I'll have a clear conscience!

I would claim for the total travel costs less the refund. ie ticket price plus extra costs incurred less refund amount.

well my thinking is that the company paid for a train ticket for you to travel from a to b and arrive in time to do x. You arrived in time to do x, therefore the company got exactly what they wanted and paid for out of the ticket - what do they need compensation for?

Whereas you are the one who suffered the delay, which happened in your own time (not work time). If a different inconvenience had happened during the journey - a conductor accidentally spilled tea on you for example, or the train braked too hard and you fell over, and they offered you a sandwich or £30 as an apology/good will gesture, you wouldn't deduct that from the cost of the ticket price, would you? Because the inconvenience was solely to you.

I understand you want to be above board though - I would probably put the claim in for the full £100 but add a note saying 'by the way, the train was delayed, which meant I had to travel x miles to a different station and pay for parking in order to arrive on time, so I complained to the company and they gave me £30 - I assume this is separate from the ticket etc as the fuel and parking costs were my own costs, outside of work time, but thought I should mention it just in case."