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What a Freedom of Information request tells us about abuse of LNER’s loyalty scheme

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In December we ran a review of LNER Perks, the loyalty scheme run by East Coast rail franchise holder LNER.

It’s not a hugely exciting loyalty scheme – basically 2% cashback on your spending – but there is a carrot for signing up. New members get a £5 voucher to spend on their next LNER Advance ticket booking.

It was mentioned in the comments that this seemed open to abuse. A Freedom of Information Request shows that this would not be a good idea …..

LNER Perks abuse revealed

LNER is under Government control and is therefore required to respond to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. All responses to such requests are made public.

In late 2023, someone asked LNER about abuse of its loyalty scheme.

You can read the full response here. In summary:

  • LNER has “identified 85 cases involving individuals who have created multiple accounts under the LNER Perks scheme”
  • 4,100 accounts have been flagged as duplicates – this is believed to be a major underestimate but the resources are not available for a more detailed examination of the membership base
  • no-one has yet been prosecuted for having multiple accounts, but
  • “LNER has recovered the correct fares that were initially evaded” with administration fees charged on top
  • £20,500 has been recovered to date

If you thought that schemes simply sat back whilst small scale fraud took place, you are wrong.

You can read the full response by LNER here.

A big hat-tip to TooPoorToBeHere for flagging this in the comments to our original article on LNER Perks.

PS. As you can see from the image above, LNER has brought back the old InterCity livery for its 225 fleet!

Category

General

Comments (52)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Paul says:
    10 Jan10 January 05:46

    If only it were as easy for Joe Public to hold train companies to account as it is for them and their army of lawyers to hold individuals to account. No one condones fraud or illegitimate behaviour but the scales of justice weigh heavily in favour of corporations. There is a need for some serious consumer protection laws in our country.

    • Alex says:
      10 Jan10 January 06:23

      The UK has stronger consumer laws than almost anywhere in the world – especially when it comes to train travel

      • Hak says:
        10 Jan10 January 07:18

        Even if this is true, it doesn’t mean the consumer protection laws are any good.

    • Paul says:
      10 Jan10 January 08:51

      It depends to which aspect you’re referring, but in many years of rail travel Delay / Repay has worked without any problem for us. In one instance LNER (who had issued the tickets) paid us out on a whole journey when the delay was on a Thameslink service.

      Contrast that with EasyJet who once refused my claim for a rail ticket I had to buy when they’d cancelled an EDI-STN flight because I didn’t travel all the way through to STN on the same day, choosing instead to go home (it was very late) and complete the STN part to pick up my car the next day.

      • Dubious says:
        10 Jan10 January 11:48

        I remember in the early days of DelayRepay they would send paper travel vouchers instead of refunds back to the card.

        Buying tickets online I rarely had a way to use them. My local ticket office refused to let me cash them in instead only allowing me to offset the cost of a new ticket. Ended up putting them in a drawer whilst figuring out what to do…found them a year later a few weeks after they expired! Must have been about £100 in those days.

        • Dubious says:
          10 Jan10 January 11:49

          *before the days of AwardWallet

        • apbj says:
          10 Jan10 January 19:38

          They also refused to extend or exchange the vouchers during Covid. More than £100 worth of my vouchers expired during this period as it was virtually impossible to travel!

  • Manya says:
    10 Jan10 January 06:58

    Are there any TfL/tube users here that use pay as you go via touching in/out on their credit card? The tfl website leads me to believe that when there are service delays refunds are made automatically to the card on which payment was made but that wasn’t the case when I was an Oyster card user so I’m dubious how that would be the case for those paying with credit cards.

    Anyone able to share any experience on this?

    • William says:
      10 Jan10 January 07:47

      You always have to apply for delay repay. Its never automatic. I remember when I first moved to London around 2017 you could link your tfl account to a particular website who would auto scan your journey history and automatically apply for refund on your behalf but unfortunately tfl put a block on it.
      I had a friend who was stuck on elizabeth line for hours before Christmas. Tfl charged them for an incomplete journey

      • Tim says:
        10 Jan10 January 08:14

        I had something similar when I had a jumper. They did refund once I put a dispute in on TFL.

      • Richie says:
        10 Jan10 January 08:47

        I had a delayed train recently. There were at least 3 delay repay eligibility announcements, it seems that not many took any notice at all.

    • thom says:
      10 Jan10 January 08:10

      You apply online – if you have created an online account with tfl with your credit card linked, you just look at the journey history and select the option for a problem/delay with the journey. They tend to be pretty good about issuing the refunds.

    • John says:
      10 Jan10 January 08:48

      It works sometimes. But you need to have entered and exited specific stations at specific times that match up to someone who would have been delayed, otherwise you just claim manually

    • jjoohhnn says:
      10 Jan10 January 09:15

      TFL make it much more difficult than other rail companies to claim delay repay in my experience. I had a delay caused by London Overground a couple of months back on a journey where the paper ticker was bought on SWR, and it took numerous phone calls and emails to try and sort it out. It’s not helped that their phone system doesn’t have an option for refunds on paper tickets, and there is no generic option. There is a form on their website (but it doesn’t say its for paper ticket refunds!).

      • Joe says:
        10 Jan10 January 11:35

        TfL don’t offer Delay Repay. They only offer compensation for delays that are wholly within their control. Delay Repay can be claimed for any disruption, regardless of the cause.

    • ADS says:
      10 Jan10 January 10:30

      on rare occasions when there is a system wide failure, TfL will announce that they will automatically issue delay repay refunds – but that’s for their own benefit to avoid being swamped with claims.

      normally it is up to the individual to apply.

      • Sunguy says:
        11 Jan11 January 15:16

        You have exactly 28 days to apply for a refund …. or to fix an “incomplete journey” – I had a fun one where I waited for over an hour at Aldgate … then had to walk round to liverpool street (got charged a full fare for waiting around Aldgate whilst it was messed up) … then it took almost double the length of time to get home … TFL initially refused to pay out as I applied on day 29(sickness and other issues).

  • Phillip says:
    10 Jan10 January 07:35

    Not all FOI requests are made public. These were made public because they were submitted through the What Do They Know platform.

    • Andy says:
      10 Jan10 January 08:18

      All authorities *should* (key word) have a pro-active publication scheme which includes responses to requests.

      • Nick says:
        10 Jan10 January 08:31

        It’s in their interests to publish them, otherwise they’ll be obliged to reply again when the same question is asked in future. TfL worked this out the hard way and now release everything they’re asked.

        • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:
          10 Jan10 January 09:40

          Every now and then the “Ian Visits” blog posts some of the more ridiculous FoI requests submitted to TFl.

          Including one asking about signal failures in Exeter!

    • John says:
      10 Jan10 January 08:49

      Well if you submit your own FOI request you can make it public on your own website (or on a forum)…

  • Matarredonda says:
    10 Jan10 January 07:48

    Wonder how many HFP readers have/had multiple accounts?
    Frankly go gain a one off £5 & 2% fare reduction is hardly worth it but am very glad LNER have taken action.

    • Chrism20 says:
      10 Jan10 January 07:55

      Suddenly becomes a bit more lucrative if you game it and get the £5 off and your multiple accounts result in you having a birthday every month giving you a 20% off discount to use every month. I suspect that’s where the bulk of the abuse is rather than the £5 credit for signing up

    • ThinkSquare says:
      10 Jan10 January 07:59

      If the 4100 accounts were from 85 people, some were making a lot of £5’s.

    • John says:
      10 Jan10 January 08:51

      To avoid detection you need to change everything. Because the discount only works on app I’m sure they record something about your device too

    • lumma says:
      10 Jan10 January 10:49

      I think I probably got it twice but not deliberately, just that I had two long term accounts with LNER and it’s predecessors with the two personal emails I use.

      I don’t really see how it’s fare evading either as you have to travel twice on LNER to use it and most of their journeys are longer distance ones. Maybe someone regularly commuting say Durham to Newcastle could sign up, pay the anytime day return of £9.60 and get £5 off tomorrow’s ticket. It’s a lot of hassle for basically buy one, get one half price

      • Rob says:
        10 Jan10 January 11:05

        What I did realise over Christmas is how much you save on LNER by split ticketing. Don’t book on Trainline, but if you search there it shows you a split by default and then you can book the same on the LNER site. The £160 First Class tickets to York I booked at short notice over Crimbo came down to £110 with a split at Newark.

        • Lumma says:
          10 Jan10 January 11:53

          London to Newcastle is often way cheaper these days than London to Sunderland, when the connection was always the same price, I think due to LNER trying to compete on price with Lumo.

          I always check on the Virgin Trains Ticketing App for this as it can be up to £20 cheaper to pay for the Metro separately

          • TeesTraveller says:
            10 Jan10 January 12:13

            Darlington to Newcastle Airport is usually £5.50 more than Darlington to Newcastle but the Newcastle > Airport on the metro is about £3 if you buy that separately.

      • TooPoorToBeHere says:
        10 Jan10 January 11:12

        Many years ago the EC-predecessor website (possibly right back in the GNER days) used to sell anytime day returns at the price of cheapday ones. It was a bug; I used to it commute for a while but it was a right faff buying them all online and getting them dispensed on the enormous airline-style paper coupons the machines printed at the time.

        Probably still got dozens of them left as bookmarks in the books I read onboard back in the pre-smartphone days.

        • Lumma says:
          10 Jan10 January 11:49

          Those huge tickets were a nightmare for awaydays when I was always the “responsible” one that was tasked with keeping hold of about 10 if them

  • points_worrier says:
    10 Jan10 January 08:58

    I know of someone who, during lockdown, bought tickets for his work journey. All barriers were open, and if not scanned he later claimed a refund for an ‘unused’ ticket. Obviously fraud, but he didn’t think anyone would notice. About 6m ago, he received an email detailing an audit of his account due to the high number of refunds, and asking him to pay for all refunded tickets, plus an admin charge (~£500) or his details would be passed to the british transport police for investigation. He paid up and was around £3k worth.

    Just goes to show – they do (eventually) clamp down on those taking the mickey.

    • John says:
      10 Jan10 January 10:12

      Over the past 18 months train line and most of the TOCs have been analysing online purchase history and even scan history. If you have a railcard be very careful with the expiry date and make sure you renew it or double check that every ticket you buy is undiscounted, or you will get in trouble. Fraudsters often get caught because they get too greedy

    • JDB says:
      10 Jan10 January 10:52

      He’s lucky that prosecutions are quite expensive, so these companies prefer just to get the money back. When someone is happy to do that sort of thing, one wonders what other frauds they are perpetrating.

    • TooPoorToBeHere says:
      10 Jan10 January 11:06

      There is a lot of database-driven activity – apparent in the railforums disputes & prosecutions section – looking for abuse like this especially of delay repay.

      When sites started to appear listing all the delayed trains on a route for a day, people realised they could use any non-specific-train ticket and claim to have been on the delayed trains every time, and took the piss, with this consequence.

      The railway appears as a traveller to have little revenue protection and thus people are very shocked when caught. Typically someone gets caught at something like “donut-ing” long commutes (buying a pair one stop tickets to get them into their departure station and out of their arrival station, but having no ticket to cover the majority of the distance travelled), details taken, and then their purchase/card history is examined and they get a bill for months or years of the avoided fares.

      Never done it, far too dangerous.

      • Rob says:
        10 Jan10 January 11:35

        No different to people who have the O2 ‘free airport lounge access if your flight is delayed’ benefit and submit an already-delayed flight on their way to the airport!

        I felt a bit guilty over Christmas – my train was cancelled so I jumped on the earlier one (which I would have booked originally had I not felt the need to build in a buffer to my connection) so I got home earlier than planned and LNER paid up 100% compensation automatically via delay repay. Had the money in my account within 72 hours.

        • Lumma says:
          10 Jan10 January 11:57

          I had a similar result during the early November storms. Booked the last train on the Thursday as it was way cheaper than the Friday afternoon when I would have much rather travelled. They issued a “Do Not Travel” warning on the Thursday afternoon, so I was able to choose whichever train I wanted on the Friday and also got a full refund for the journey!

        • BP says:
          10 Jan10 January 13:21

          O2 SmartDelay appears to be no more. The website remains but it’s not on the Priority app.

        • Ken says:
          10 Jan10 January 18:26

          It’s very different legally.

          Fare evasion is a specific criminal offence & there is a clear public interest in having some prosecutions every year.

          Gaining access to a lounge would probably come under the fraud act 2006, but zero chance the CPS is taking that on as a case.

      • Dan says:
        10 Jan10 January 12:35

        One Doughnuter got stopped after buying single oytser cards to tap out.https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/15/ca-ban-43000-fare-dodger-financial-services-industry-blackrock-jonathan-burrows

      • chrism20 says:
        10 Jan10 January 17:52

        There was a peach of a one like this up here in Scotland a few years back where the passenger was going from a Lanarkshire (Bellshill I think) into Edinburgh five days a week but they were purchasing bulk loads of Slateford to Edinburgh tickets to get through the barriers at Edinburgh.

        They caught him as it flagged up that he was continually collecting the tickets at Bellshill

    • Barry says:
      10 Jan10 January 16:27

      Back in the 90s I was prosecuted for fare evasion. I had a pass that, each week, they’d stamp the next week’s date in. One week it was stamped for the month. I didn’t notice for about two days but, after realising, thought, ‘oh, that’s a piece of luck’. About a week later an inspector noticed (apparently they used different something or other). I was told I’d be hearing from them. And I did – arrested at home, taken to police station, questioned, charged, court, fined, criminal record. Luckily the local newspaper report noted the magistrate saying ‘I wasn’t really dishonest but rather foolish’.

  • Alex G says:
    10 Jan10 January 09:19

    “Just goes to show – they do (eventually) clamp down on those taking the mickey.”

    The word you are looking for is stealing.

  • CC says:
    10 Jan10 January 09:51

    Where I used to work years ago a person managed to get an employee pass card either for network rail or the train company. He bought himself a high vis jacket and I assume he was let through the barriers either end by showing pass. He stopped as he started to get paranoid about being caught after a close call. His journey was quite long into London so he saved thousands over the few years he was doing it.

  • ADS says:
    10 Jan10 January 10:31

    any other publicly owned companies that we think would be ripe for an FoI ?

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