Simple Pound

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Have you ever been annoyed because you’re getting blamed for someone else’s faults? More specifically, have you ever wondered why the tube/bus/train is running late just the day you needed to be on time? I’ve cursed the London public transport system more than once since having to use it every single day, despite knowing it’s meant to be one of the most efficient and reliable means of transportation in the world - I’ve certainly seen worse (New York City subway - anyone?).

In any case, a colleague of mine told me about the TfL’s (Transport for London) refunds website that you can use to re-claim the price of a single journey in the event that your normal journey time is delayed by more than 15 minutes due to circumstances within the control of TfL (this excludes announced station and underground line closures). Just imagine getting reimbursed for all those signal failures, late track replacement and engineering works!

I’ve done it twice myself so far, and I just received my first £4 voucher (equivalent price of a single journey on the tube) which I will be able to use towards any purchase with TfL in the next 13 months. Yes, it’s not quite as good as getting a cash reimbursement and hence limits the use of the proceeds, but imagine the amount of vouchers you could collect over 12 months (for people with annual season tickets like myself) and subsequently use to reduce your next season ticket - which is fairly unavoidable if you continue living and working in London.

So, whenever you’re next sitting in a dark tunnel, surrounded by strangers and the only words you hear are: “Transport for London would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused”, you can feel a little more content knowing you’ll be £4 richer because of it. Here is the all important link that’ll achieve this: Tube refunds.

One word of caution (inspired by the reaction of a friend after I had just told him about the website): Do not start to monitor delays of other tube lines not affecting your journey and submit claims for every single one of them. Bear in mind that the people responsible for the refunds are hardly stupid and in the best case you’ll get yourself banned from using the service (hence forfeiting a refund when you are actually affected yourself), but in the worst case you’ll ruin the deal for all of us by making TfL abandon the entire scheme (if just a few people started submitting claims for all delays every day it could cost them a fortune!). Thus, use refunds responsibly!

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