Who should get the delay repay money for train ticket?

[MarmaladeMarxist]

The payer, or the traveller?

I occasionally travel by train for work - I have the use of a company card to pay for things like this.

Last week this happened and I had a nightmare journey with a cancelled train, long wait on a platform with no shelter in driving rain, replacement bus etc. As I was travelling in the evening to stay overnight (with a family member, not in a hotel) and attend a meeting first thing in the morning, I wasn't late for the meeting despite being 3 hours late arriving.

This means that I can claim delay repay and get a full refund on the ticket - but should this money be paid to my company (who paid for the ticket) or to me (who had the inconvenience and stress of a horrible cold wet journey)?

You really, but I guess it would be paid to the card that paid for the ticket.

😂 A joke I assume

It isn’t, you can choose where it gets repaid to.

It's payable to whoever has the delay repay account...!

As I understand it, it's compensation for inconvenience rather than refund for services not rendered, so should go to the traveller.

The company, unless you have it in writing that they are happy for you to claim it and keep it.

If it is compensation it is for the passenger, whoever paid for the ticket isn’t relevant.

If it is a refund - then it goes back to original payment method.

sorry but I thought this is common sense?

You can make the claim yourself. My employer has a policy that the money goes to charity though.

The traveller, as you were the one who suffered. Your company don’t profit from you being stuck on a platform.

Most companies have this as policy

Work, we have clear travel instructions that money paid with a company card has to be returned if there is a compensation for anything.

Saying that, the company would have happily paid for a taxi, overnight stay if a delay meant no acceptable means home, a meal/coffee/drinks while waiting.
I had dry cleaning paid when stranded with no enough luggage.

iIt is called delay repay - so that sounds like a refund (repay the cost of the ticket) - it should be refunded to the person who paid for the ticket ie the company. You should definitely check with your company otherwise you could find yourself facing fraud and disciplinary charges.

I would say it SHOULD be for you, as it’s for the inconvenience. You still made it to where you needed to be, on time, for work, so work got what they paid for. You on the other hand had a miserable long journey and presumably aren’t getting paid for the extra time it took to travel there, so I’d want the compensation. But whether or not you can make that happen I don’t know.

I always claim and I always keep the money myself. I am the person who has been inconvenienced.

Why would it be a joke?

It honestly doesn’t matter what people on the internet think. You need to check your company policy re this or possibly end up on a disciplinary for expenses fraud. I know that sounds dramatic but just not worth the risk.

The train company website defines delay repay as "compensation". If you don't/can't travel at all, you can apply for a "refund". So they aren't the same thing. You can choose what account delay repay goes into, it isn't automatic to the payer.

If I don't get the compensation myself I'm not even going to bother applying for it btw. I will be finding out from my company today. But I was curious what the general feeling was about which way they'd answer!

My employer states that it is for me, as it is compensation for the inconvenience.

Given you can choose where it is paid they wouldn’t know if you claimed it anyway.

I know I have to follow the company line - I just don't know yet what that is. But I'm curious as to what others would expect, and if my company aren't sure about it/don't have a proper policy on this (entirely possible, trust me) then what I should push for.

This isn’t a moral question, it’s a company policy question.

My current employer’s policy is that compensation goes to the traveller, but I have previously worked for a company whose policy was that it should be repaid to the organisation.

I’m guessing your job is worth more to you that a few hundred pounds so check their policy and follow it.

Depends on the reason for the money
If it's a recap for extra expense incurred, then it goes to whoever paid that expense:

• if you had to buy bought new tickets for a connecting journey that you'd missed because of the delay or you had to buy food because you should have been receiving a pre-paid for meal when you arrived, but you arrived hours after needing that meal because of delays, then it goes to you.
• If you say had a company credit card and spent for the above on that card, then it goes to the company.

If it's not to do with recapping expense, but just an apology for the inconvenience of having to wait for hours on cold train stations, then you were the one that had to do that, so you deserve the money!

In this situation, the traveller. You’re the one that was inconvenienced. You can be refunded for more than the ticket cost if it’s a return ticket and the delay was more than a certain amount (over 2 hours), and that could happen both on the outward and the homeward leg of the journey. So that shows that it’s not a refund. You get refunded for a cancelled journey that you don’t take a later train on, but you get compensated for a train where the journey completed but not within the time frame.

I was having this conversation this week as I would usually delay repay to myself for the inconvenience but my new company has a policy that it goes back to them! I’m challenging this as like you, the delay was not on company time i.e my work day had finished. I could understand if I was travelling in the day and on company time.

I’m not wasting my time doing the forms to pay back the company for my inconvenience 🤣 they can do it themselves!

In my civil service department delay repay compensation goes to the department. This annoys me because if I'm delayed on the return journey then it's definitely me being inconvenienced by getting home late! On the outward journey it's fair enough as clearly the department is inconvenienced if I can't get to the destination to do my job.

It is such a stupid system. It doesn’t seem to incentivise them to run the trains on time but it does incentivise them to put up all the ticket prices up to cover the cost. I would much rather have cheaper tickets for a crappy train system and no repayment scheme.

In my company it goes back to the traveller, but you can’t claim an additional meal for example, if you are delayed.