If you were inconvenienced in the UK recently by Storm Babet and your train journey was cancelled, did you get a refund from the company you booked the ticket(s) through?

My experience was as follows with Trainline.

I booked a ticket from Leicester to Llanelli via Birmingham New Street and Newport for Friday, 20th October and a ticket from Llanelli to London Paddington via Swindon for Monday, 23rd October. I booked these tickets with Trainline.

On 20th October, the train left Leicester and arrived a little late at New Street. The train to Newport came in to the platform but was then cancelled leaving me stranded. There was flooding on the line in two places so there were no trains to the west of England and south Wales (a situation that remained until Sunday, 22nd October). The weather forecast was grim, so I decided to stay in Birmingham and travel to London Euston on Monday.

I applied for a refund for my tickets only to be told by Trainline (via their app) that my tickets were ‘Advanced Single’ tickets and so not eligible for a refund. How could tickets booked online for a single journey be anything other than ‘Advanced Single’? When you book online, you are always booking in advance!

The only contact options were an expensive premium rate number and a Chatbot where the waiting time was at least two hours. I thought I’d wait to pursue the matter until I returned to Vancouver.

I contacted Transport Focus in the UK via email and provided them with the travel details and the amount I was wanting as a refund. They took up my case and contacted Trainline. The day after they did this, Trainline provided the refunds.

What can you say? Well done Transport Focus, and if I ever need a refund and the company I booked the tickets with won’t pay, I’ll be contacting Transport Focus again. I’d advise you to do the same. Another thing is, I won’t be booking my train tickets with Trainline when I go to Germany and the UK in 2024. I don’t like how they treat their customers.