In January my wife and I and three daughters travelled to Euston from Chester for a weekend in London. We bought tickets in December by phone from the Llandrindod Wells ticket office, which were posted to us.
On the day of travel we realised we had left our family railcard at home and had to pay £293.65 for new tickets to the helpful train manager. It was explained that we would need to contact Virgin and demonstrate we had a valid card to get a refund.
As we live some distance from the nearest Virgin ticket office, we decided to email scans of all our tickets, the receipt for the new tickets and our railcard to three separate Virgin email addresses in early February. We received an automated reply saying we should expect a response within 24 hours.
I eventually received an email telling me to contact the station that I had bought the tickets from (they had been bought on the train) or to speak to the customer relations team. I was asked again to email scans of the tickets.
In early March I was contacted by customer services, apologising for the delay and saying claims had to be made within 28 days at a Virgin-managed station. However, it said it would consider processing this for me and asked for copies of the additional tickets we had purchased. These had been retained by the barrier on our return at Chester, and I had assumed that the scanned receipt would have been sufficient.
When I sent the scan of the receipt I received the following response: “Unfortunately, I am unable to accept a receipt as we need the physical tickets back in our possession before we can refund any money back to you. As we are an audited company we are required to process these claims in this way.”
Please help – nearly £300 is a lot of money to pay for tickets on top of the ones we had already purchased. TJ, Ruthin, North Wales
Changes to national ticketing policy to give more flexibility in the cases of passengers who have made a mistake in forgetting their railcard were announced by the Department for Transport last year and came into force in March. Virgin Trains also changed its policy on its West Coast line and will automatically refund the cost of the new ticket if the person finds their railcard after the journey and takes it to their local ticket office (but only once, and on a discretionary basis after that).
The complication, in your case, was that you had not kept hold of the new tickets to allow Virgin to process the refund. Virgin said you received correct information from its team – it doesn’t usually accept receipts because it has to protect itself from fraudulent claims.
“However, occasionally, when it’s clear that there is a genuine error in forgetting to keep the ticket, we do refund the new one. The team has decided that this is one of those times, so we’re happy to refund.”
It’s worth clarifying Virgin’s policy of advising customers to hang on to their original and newly bought tickets if they are seeking a refund. Gates do gobble up tickets but if you show them to staff, rather than put them in the machine, you can keep them. You should receive your £293 soon.
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