TrainPal ruined our family trip, refused a straightforward refund for a cancelled train, and wasted days of our time
We booked tickets for a family of 6 (2 adults, 4 children) through TrainPal for the 11 July 2026 18:59 Manchester Victoria to Middlesbrough service. The train was cancelled by the operator (TransPennine Express) — we have the official cancellation email from TrainPal confirming this. I immediately requested a refund via the TrainPal app, exactly as their system prompted. Days later I received an email saying the refund was unsuccessful due to “Manual audit fail” because the ticket had supposedly been “validated/scanned.” This is completely false. We never boarded any train. The service never ran. We were left stranded at the station with small children and had no choice but to order an UberXL, which cost us £91.98 just to get part of the way. I spent hours in chat with multiple TrainPal agents (Jennifer, Ethan, and others). The conversations were deeply frustrating and contradictory: They first claimed the ticket was used. They admitted the train was cancelled but said as a “third-party platform” they couldn’t help. They kept asking for proof we didn’t travel while simultaneously saying a scan record existed. They directed us to TransPennine Express’s Delay Repay portal, but offered no real assistance processing the original refund they themselves initiated. The whole experience was stressful, time-consuming, and left us significantly out of pocket. TrainPal promotes easy booking and refunds for cancellations, yet when a real cancellation happened they failed at every step — poor communication, inaccurate records, and zero accountability. Families should not have to fight this hard for a refund on a service that never ran. Avoid TrainPal if you value reliable support and actual refunds when things go wrong. We will be pursuing this further with the operator, our bank, and relevant consumer protection bodies.