South Western Railway has expanded the operation to deal with refunds after receiving around 23,000 since the coronavirus pandemic in the UK.
A dedicated refund processing centre has opened, the number of desks in Southampton have been increased, there is a separate contact centre in Basingstoke and some of the managers are remote working, with the team working 6am-10pm every day.
Mark Hopwood, Managing Director, has thanked customers for their patience in a video on Twitter.
He says: “Our priority is the health and wellbeing of our customers and our colleagues, but I want to make sure everyone knows we have received your request for a refund and we’re absolutely committed to processing those refunds and getting them back to customers.
“We are receiving an exceptionally high number of requests for refunds and in the last five weeks, of course, with the lockdown restrictions, we’ve received what we think is about 23,000 requests for refunds.
“In the period of the lockdown, we’ve opened a dedicated refund processing centre, we’ve already processed 5,000 of those refund requests, but every refund is different, so they have to be calculated and then we have to process them so we’re now doing that.
“We’re now getting through about 500 of those each and every day, so I just wanted to say thank you for your patience, thank you for your support. We are committed to getting through these refunds and I hope that each of you will hear from us very, very shortly.”
Photo credit: The Image Team
