Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert has warned train passengers to ‘be quick’ to claim their share of £25 million compensation today. The BBC and ITV star’s team at MSE has urged South West train passengers to check if they’re due £30 compensation.
Payouts will be made following a group legal claim brought by campaigner Justin Gutmann, who argued that an estimated 1.4 million passengers who held TfL Travelcards had effectively been charged twice for parts of their journeys with South West Trains, which ran the South Western railway until 20 August 2017.
Mr Gutmann, a former Citizens Advice executive, told Consumer Voice: “‘We are happy to have reached an agreement with Stagecoach to make available £25 million of the claimed £39 million for distribution to its customers.
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“This is money in the pocket now for 1.4 million Stagecoach South Western Train customers and avoids a lengthy trial.” The company agreed to the settlement without any admission of liability and its South Western customers will soon be able to make a compensation claim. A spokesperson for Stagecoach Group said: “We are pleased that the Competition Appeal Tribunal has approved the collective settlement that we have agreed with the claimant in this long-running case related to historic matters.”
This major settlement is the first-of-its-kind to be made available for affected consumers to make a claim. But it doesn’t come without challenges. “We need to get 1.4 million rail customers to step forward to make a claim for compensation for ticket purchases made over seven years ago,” said Gutmann.
The legal case against the firm revolved around so-called ‘boundary fares’ for those with TfL Travelcards. Boundary fares let you travel beyond the zones of your Travelcard by only paying for the portion of the journey outside those zones.
Mr Gutmann and his lawyers claimed that South West Trains didn’t do enough to make customers aware of boundary fares, and didn’t make it easy enough to buy them.