Which? super-complaint: Office of Rail and Road

Due to the unusual nature of the rail economy, if people receive poor service from a TOC operating a route they use, they cannot turn to another TOC. This means there must be an alternative reason for a TOC to improve its performance, and compensation to punish poor service will only work if people claim it in the first place.

This super-complaint identifies two problems with the compensation process: that people do not know their rights (in large part due to TOCs not making enough effort to inform them), and that the process is inconvenient (for example, TOCs may require them to submit tickets as proof of travel, but the ticket barriers at the final destination often ‘swallow’ the tickets).

Our super-complaint calls for the Office of Rail and Road to investigate the extent to which TOCs are contributing to low compensation uptake, what drives this, and how changes in regulation and the ways TOCs behave will make people more aware of their rights to compensation.