Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert team has urged train passengers and commuters who caught a journey between 2015 and 2017 to check whether they can claim free £30 compensation. The BBC and ITV star’s team have sounded the alarm to South West Trains passengers.
It said: “If you took a South West train out of London between 1 October 2015 and 20 August 2017, and held a Transport for London (TfL) Travelcard at the time, you may have been overcharged and you can claim compensation.
“But you’ll need to be quick as the deadline for claims is Friday 10 January. 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.
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“The case has now been settled out of court, with South West Trains agreeing to pay up to £25 million in compensation.” Mr Gutmann argued that SSWT overcharged rail passengers for part of their journeys by not making them sufficiently aware of boundary fares. Boundary fares allow rail passengers to travel beyond the zones covered by their travelcard to their final destination without paying twice for the part of their journey already covered by their travelcard.
Mr Gutmann claimed these cheaper fares are “not easily available online” and “rarely offered at a ticket office” and estimates around 1.4million customers could be owed compensation. South West Trains settled the case for £25million but denied all liability for wrongdoing.
In order to be entitled to compensation, you must have held a valid TfL travelcard between October 1, 2015 and August 20, 2017, and you bought one or more South West Trains tickets for travel from a station within the zones covered by your TfL Travelcard.