In early 2020 my family and I were due to fly home from visiting a friend in Oman when the plane encountered a technical problem. We returned to departures and were rebooked on to a flight the following day. British Airways then sent us to a very decent hotel, where we were given rooms and a food voucher. The next day we were taxied back to the airport, and flew to London without incident.

I then learned that under EU regulations, this relatively minor inconvenience entitled us to additional compensation of £600 each. We were in business class, but had bought all four tickets with frequent-flyer points. Given this, and since the airline had done all it could, I didn’t really want to claim. Alas, since I am not so flush that I can turn down £2,400 for 20 minutes of online form-filling, I ended up taking the dosh. I still feel bad about it sometimes.

Fast-forward to 2022 and my wife and I are heading home from Newcastle on LNER. Our train was cancelled, so I headed over to the nice Geordie lady at the information desk, who rebooked our seats on a train 63 minutes later, ruefully explaining that we could no longer be seated together. Remembering that I was up north, where such banter is still acceptable, I explained we had been married for 33 years and had nothing left to say to each other in any case.

So after a perfectly jolly exchange, we sat contentedly in Costa Coffee for 45 minutes before boarding the 19.03. For this, we were entitled to a complete refund – around £150. I resolved not to claim, as I thought our treatment had been perfectly fair. Maybe they could have paid for the coffee, but that was all I would have wanted.

But then for some weird reason LNER kept sending me emails encouraging me to reclaim the whole price of the ticket, even though I thought it had fulfilled its duty already. In the end I buckled and got the damn refund. But I still find this stupid.

At least for airlines, the system is safe from fraud, since BA knew I was on the affected flight. The national ‘delay repay’ scheme for train companies, however, seems wide-open to abuse: you buy an open ticket, then go and look for delayed trains online – how is the operator to know you were not on board?

Indeed one man, using multiple aliases, fraudulently claimed £35,000 from Greater Anglia in two weeks – using the same ticket. He did get an eight-month suspended prison sentence – but this suggests thousands of smaller cases are going undetected. It must be costing the railways a fortune, on top of the millions paid in legitimate but excessive compensation. What if this money went towards improving the trains, rather than pandering to the anally retentive whingers and skinflints who claim for every minor inconvenience?

And why pay compensation in cash? LNER could have given me vouchers for future travel. The value of compensation is not so much economic as symbolic. Had BA sent me two tickets to the Concorde Room, its flagship first-class lounge at Heathrow, I might have been equally happy. (On my one visit to the Concorde Room, I found it deserted but for a soigné man standing at the bar holding a glass of champagne. It was Alan Whicker. If you were born in 1965 like me, this alone was worth £600.)

As customers, we have rights, but we also have an obligation to be fair-minded. I once encountered a man livid at finding a condom in his hotel loo. It emerged that he had already been comped his whole one-night stay for this, but now wanted money for ‘emotional distress’. For all anyone knows, the man may carry a pack of Durex for this very purpose. Either way, people like this aren’t ultimately stealing from the hotel – they are stealing from you.

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