Might be of use to anyone travelling to The Isle of Wight.

Some weeks back, my wife travelled from Warminster to West Cowes. Her tickets (OPDRs), split at Salisbury, costs £31-60. Her train arrived late at Southampton, causing her to miss the dedicated bus to the ferry terminal - and, of course, miss the ferry. Rather than wait for the next dedicated ferry bus, she caught a normal City bus down to the vicinity of the ferry terminal (she has a bus pass). The next ferry was 70 mins after the one shown in her itinerary - so she arrived in Cowes 70 mins late.

She duly submitted a Delay Repay claim for the 70 min delay, this resulted in a payment of £3.95 for the delay experienced on her "journey to Southampton" !  She then submitted a lengthy detailed appeal against this repayment. She stated that she bought a "conventional" rail ticket from a Train Operating Company and that both her origin and destination points (not Southampton!) had a 3 letter railway station code - WMN & WTW. Nowhere, that we could find, in the GWR website, The Passengers' Charter nor the National Rail Conditions of Travel does it state that the whole of a delayed "journey" has to be carried out by train.

I somehow thought that she might experience problems with this claim, as it involved a bus, and a ferry as well as the train (which actually caused the delay)..............but was pleasantly surprised with their speedy capitulation on receipt of her appeal. A further £11.85 arrived in the post - 50% of the total ticket price.

 
My understanding and personal experience is that it is worth appealing in complex cases. Automated systems may get most of the easy cases right, but those few more challenging ones something get initially decided to the detriment of the claimant.  I suspect (but have no confirmation) that GWR have customer and claim data.

Very much like so many other things on the UK railway, things are so complex and systems too basic to cope.   Try freedom tickets in ticket gates, this delay-repay example, or on-platform indicators that are obviosuly wrong.

 
I’d second that. 

I successfully appealed an initial decision to refuse compensation on Groupsave tickets as it was suggested my delay could have been reduced had I caught a Cross Country service.  I went back to them pointing out Groupsave is not valid on those services and promptly received the correct refund.

 

Classic evidence of a rail fare system so complex ... that it can't really cope

 

Classic evidence of why it suits the railway to keep it that way.