Make that tube delay work for you (Picture: Getty)

If you take the Tube regularly, those two little words – ‘signal failure’ – are enough to ruin your day.

You’ve ended up late for work, had to queue eight-deep to get on an already packed train and you’re paying full fare for the privilege.

But at least one of those three things doesn’t have to be inevitable. There’s a website where you can get automatic refunds for any Tube journey delayed more than 15 minutes, and it’s ridiculously easy to do.

Instead of having to document each individual stage of the journey to persuade TfL you deserve your money back, the site calculates and submits it for you.




Then the money ends up back in your account, when all you’ve had to do is touch in and out with your card.

The site calculates and refunds you automatically (Picture: Getty/Reclaim.co.uk)

We tested it out, and within a week had been refunded for three trips.

Here’s one of the journeys below, after TfL approved the refund and sent a notification:

We tried it out and are already getting results

It gives you money back even when you might not have realised it was worth doing, say if you were waiting a while for a train at Earls Court.

For taking five minutes to register, you could end up making a lot of money back.

Okay, how do I do this?

You need to register your card with TfL, then link it to the Reeclaim website (you can do both stages by clicking the link).

Once this is done, it will check for any time you’re due a refund on:

London Underground London Overground Docklands Light Railway TfL Rail

For the London Underground and DLR, you’ll get a refund if there is a delay of 15 minutes or more. For the London Overground and TfL Rail, a delay must be 30 minutes.

When will trips be refunded?

Any unplanned delay (e.g. signal failure) caused by TfL is eligible for a refund.

However, disruptions such as planned engineering, strikes, security alerts, bad weather and customer incidents aren’t counted.

Can’t I just do it myself?

You could do, but most people won’t bother with the hassle of submitting each individual claim to TfL.

‘By using our service, you can sit back and relax while our system claims your refunds on your behalf,’ Reeclaim says.

How do I get the money back?

TfL will credit the money to your online account for successful claims, which can be used to top up your Oyster card or can be refunded directly onto your contactless card.

This will usually depend on which card you used for that particular delayed journey.

What’s the catch?

None really.

The company had originally planned to take a percentage of each refund to make it profitable, once it became more established.

However, a spokesman said this plan had been scrapped, describing it as ‘a bold pivot, but we feel it’s the right decision for the foreseeable future.’

Future revenue will be generated through advertising and ‘other channels which do not involve charging commuters’, they said.

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