Grieving mum says Southern Rail won't refund son's £4,200 season ticket because his bank account's closed
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A grieving mum has slammed a rail company for refusing to refund her dead son's £4,200 travel card.
Polly Paice has had to battle Southern Rail after her only son Chris died of lung cancer on March 12.
He bought an annual season ticket from Haywards Heath, West Sussex, to his job as a compliance officer at the Bank of Montreal in London, starting on January 1.
But the train operator insists it can only refund customers on the card used for the original purchase and Mrs Paice shut his bank account shortly after he died.
She first contacted Southern on March 18 - six days after her son, 43, passed away from the non-smoking related cancer and just two-and-a-half months after he was diagnosed.
(Photo: PA)
Since then she has been back and forth between the train company and Chris' bank, but Southern's head office have still not come up with an answer.
They sent Mrs Paice, 69, a letter in early April confirming they could offer a refund so she took the letter to Haywards Heath station.
She says staff there were "very helpful" but were forbidden to give refunds to any other card other than the one the purchase was originally made on.
She has since contacted the company five times about the situation and said it is unacceptable for families in mourning to have to fight for the money back.
Mrs Paice, of Lindfield, West Sussex, where her son also lived, said: "It's causing so much stress on top of what is already a very stressful time.
"I have had a total meltdown over it.
"We shut his account, as you are supposed to, after his death. There seems to be no way to get a refund if your relative has died.
"It's the blind stubbornness of it. I'm certain this must have happened before, yet Southern seem to have absolutely no policy to deal with it."
Mr Paice's travelcard was paid for via a season ticket loan from his company.
The Paice family were hoping to bypass probate for it and simply hand it back to his employer.
But even if Southern Rail did now refund the amount to his card, it would probably disappear into a banking black hole as the account number no longer exists.
Now Mrs Paice, Chris' girlfriend Alex Nortje, 38, and sister Vicki, 41, hope to force the franchise into a u-turn that gives grieving families more power over how refunds are issued.
She added: "We could do without it, having to come to terms with the loss of Chris and dealing with his estate and having to go back and forth.
"I don't want this to happen to other people. It's caused so much stress."
A spokeswoman for Southern said: "We are extremely sorry for the difficulty that Mrs Paice has encountered while trying to confirm a refund.
"We will be contacting Mrs Paice on Tuesday to resolve this."