I am very frustrated with Virgin Trains West Coast. I bought advance tickets from its website – two reduced tickets for a senior costing £14.50 each and one for £22, for a total of £51 – largely because it is offering automatic refunds if a train is delayed.
Sure enough, our train from Crewe to Euston on 5 November was well over 90 minutes late arriving into London. Virgin boasts that it will send an email confirming the refund within 24 hours, with it landing in your account within three days. Neither happened. As a precaution I completed an online form having heard nothing after three days.
Follow-up emails to customer service have resulted in no progress whatsoever. It is beyond my understanding that in these days of sophisticated technology that someone keying in the fact that the train was late does not result in a virtually instantaneous refund! DF, Crewe
You eventually did receive your refund, trumpeted by Virgin as a “no forms, no fuss” deal. To add insult to injury you were invited to complete Virgin’s customer satisfaction survey – which you have declined to do. It’s still not clear, however, why you did not receive your compensation through Virgin’s “automatic delay repay” scheme – you were eligible as you bought an advance ticket online through the Virgin trains website, and your journey did not include another train company.
Virgin is trying to find out what happened and tells us: “Thousands of people have received our automatic delay repay without lifting a finger, and we’re investigating why that didn’t happen in this case. We are glad DF has received his refund in the meantime.”
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