On Nationalrail.com we have a contact form where people seeking all sorts of advice on fares and ticketing, and many other things too, send us a message for a straightforward answer. Top of the board for questions is the issue of railcards. The basic question is “Am I entitled to a refund on my railcard because I was not able to use it during the pandemic?”, or, secondly, “Can I get an extension on the expiry date of my railcard.
The simple answer is that the Government has decided there will be no refunds, and no extensions. The first decision is defensible, and we don’t have a lot to quibble with the no refunds policy. After all, many railcards are bought with the intention of making only one trip, since any ticket costing more than £90 with the one-third discount (£30) will pay for the cost of the railcard (also £30). So any trip or trips exceeding £90 will generate a saving. It’s better still for disabled persons railcard holders who only pay £20, and save from £60 worth of tickets upwards. Two Together card holders need only spent £90 a couple – £45 each.
There are 5.2 million in circulation, so refunding would be cumbersome and expensive, whilst many railcard holders will have already saved the cost of purchase. It would be impossible to tell who had and who had not.
An extension of railcard validity would not cost anything and might help boost the level of rail travel from the low numbers seen during the pandemic, when non-essential travel was not permitted. As restrictions are eased from 12th April, railcard holders who are generally well-disposed to the railway could be tempted back, and make journeys that they would not make without a discount.
You could develop complex models to predict the revenue from people travelling or not travelling. But let’s take a really simple example. Pre-pandemic, if two travellers had railcards the cost of a given hypothetical journey costing £50 would fall from £50 to £33 with the discount. So two travellers would spend £66. If the expiry date of railcards was extended by a year, say, those two travellers would spend potentially another £66. But without a discount, one traveller might be so annoyed at the lack of extension that he would not travel again, or go by car, or go by National Express (which has automatically extended validity of its coachcards with no fuss or argument). The other might grudgingly cough up for the full fare. So the revenue for the railway is one single undiscounted fare of £50. Result £16 revenue less than it would have been (£50 instead of £66), plus one customer so irritated that he doesn’t travel at all, and another feeling he has been ripped off. What a perfect way to generate additional travel. And in the present environment of reduced travel, there are no additional costs to accommodate additional passengers. In the short run, the cost of running an empty or half-full train are about the same.
At a public transport ticketing forum in March chaired by the CEO of Transport Focus, the passenger watchdog, I raised this same question of a government minister. Others at the conference upvoted this question to be asked and there was general opprobrium at the conference about this perverse decision. The official line is published on the railcard website:
“After careful consideration, the government has confirmed to us that Railcards will remain non-refundable and will not be extended. Refunding or extending Railcards for over 5.1m customers would come at a significant cost to the taxpayer, at a time when the focus must be on maintaining rail services to support the country’s recovery from the pandemic. Please rest assured that this decision hasn’t been taken lightly and was made at the highest level.
Rail services continued to run throughout the pandemic to support key workers and the economy. Anyone who continues to travel by train with a valid Railcard can use their Railcard discount on their journey if they are eligible to do so. Many customers can make back the £30 cost of a Railcard in just one journey, which is why they are non-refundable.”
Last June, Transport Focus came out clearly on the side of the passenger.
“Train operators should offer a validity extension or discount on railcard renewal to passengers as soon as possible. No-one should be unfairly out of pocket for doing the right thing and staying at home,” said Anthony Smith, chief executive of Transport Focus.
“It is vital that train operators make every passenger aware of their rights to money back, and make the process as easy and quick as possible to ensure it is worth passengers’ while.”
Time has gone by, and as I said at the start there is no realistic chance of a refund. But it’s worth suggesting to your MP that in denying a railcard extension, the ministers have got it wrong. To kickstart the railway, it’s worth getting the railcard holders to start travelling again. They tend to be the most loyal customers. If you have a railcard which has expired, don’t chuck it in the recycling. Remember than U-turns are not impossible, and you might yet get a pleasant surprise from a simple look at railway economics.. So, what dates should the extension be for? That’s a subject for another blog.
Alex Nelson
Director, nationalrail.com
