Pat couldn’t get a ticket to ride

ELIZABETH McMILLAN, of Nottingham, wrote to Raw Deal on behalf of her mum Pat.

Last September Pat bought a new laptop.

Though in her 70s, Pat is quite computer-savvy and her first act with her new purchase was to go online and book train tickets from Nottingham Parkway (her nearest station) to London St Pancras to visit family. The cost was £41.35. Then she and her husband changed their mind and decided to travel from the main Nottingham train station and went back online to re-book.

But when the tickets arrived in the post she was annoyed to see she’d booked day returns instead of open-ended tickets. Pat phoned to attempt to cancel.

And that’s where her troubles began.

She was told that as her original booking was already in the system it couldn’t be cancelled.

But a complete new journey could be booked and she should return her original tickets to the Edinburgh office for a refund.

She did as instructed, posting off all her paperwork with the tickets. But then nothing happened. She rang Trainline again and was asked for a tracking number of the envelope she’d sent to Edinburgh.

But she didn’t have any such number.

This was the first she knew that tickets should be returned via the recorded delivery service.

Few of us can afford to write off £41 for tickets that are never going to be used, but each time she or her daughter phoned the message was the same – the tickets couldn’t be found.

She lost count of how many times she was told: “When the tickets are received a refund will be issued.”

Raw Deal got in touch with Trainline’s public relations department and it cut through the red tape.

It sent us an email saying: “Unfortunately, we have not received Mrs McMillan’s tickets.

“Therefore we must assume that they were lost in the post. We do advise customers to return tickets via recorded delivery to avoid these situations, which are rare, from occurring.

“As a gesture of goodwill, however, we’re happy to refund Mrs McMillan the full cost of the original ticket on this occasion.

“Mrs McMillan will receive the refund within four working days.”