Can you please help me get the £2,500 that I am due back from Southern, after I cashed in my annual season ticket?

Despite processing my claim more than two months ago, I am no nearer seeing the money. Southern Rail has insisted that the money must be charged back to the Amazon credit card I bought it on. The problem is that I have since closed the account.

NewDay, which supplied the card on Amazon’s behalf, can’t tell me where the money is or find a solution. I have contacted it several times but am getting nowhere. At one stage, staff could not even find my old account, let alone my money. Please help – it’s a lot of money.

AV, Lewes

Back in March, when it became clear I would not be needing my season ticket any time soon, I applied to Great Western Railway for a refund. I have been waiting 63 days and my repeated attempts to get this resolved have come to nothing. In May, the company asked for my bank details, which I duly supplied but since then nothing has happened.

My season ticket is digital, loaded on to a smart card, so I’m at a complete loss as to why it’s taken so long. My colleagues who travel on different train lines have all received their refunds. It just seems to be GWR which is unreasonably slow.

AL, by email

Alongside the endless airline complaints in recent weeks, there have been a growing number of rail season ticket refund problems. The first letter exposes what has become a big issue for commuters – their refunds being applied to credit cards that no longer exist. To comply with money-laundering regulations, companies making a refund will almost always insist it has to be done to the card that was used to make the purchase. As well as affecting those who have cancelled their card since using it to pay, this has also been a problem for consumers with an updated card on an account that still exists.

We asked NewDay to get on the case and happily, it quickly found your money. It has apologised, sent you the money owed, plus an extra sum to make up for the inconvenience.

In the second case, GWR, which regularly features in this column for the wrong reasons, said part of the delay was caused by you telling it in the application that you purchased the ticket online, when it had been at a ticket office. This meant it went to the “wrong team”.

Happily, the application has now been sent to the right team and processed – and is on its way. GWR has apologised for the delay, which it said was “compounded by an unprecedented volume of refunds requested and lower than normal staff numbers because of the coronavirus pandemic”.

For anyone who still plans to ask for a refund, I would do it in person at a station. Note, you can only back-claim for 56 days, and you still have to a pay a £10 admin fee.

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