Terms of service

Version: 2026-10-25 · These terms apply from 25 October 2026.

1. Who we are

latemate is run by Oliver Mather, trading as latemate, of 10 Providence Avenue, Rochester, Kent ME1 1NF ("latemate", "we", "us"). You can contact us at info@latemate.app or through the Contact page.

latemate is an independent service. We are not a train company and we are not part of, or affiliated with, any train operator, National Rail or the Delay Repay scheme. You can always claim Delay Repay directly from your train operator yourself, for free.

2. What latemate does

• You tell us the trains you usually catch and the ticket you travel on.
• We follow those trains. When one is late or cancelled enough to claim, we ask whether you were on it.
• When you confirm, we prepare a Delay Repay claim and, with your authority, submit it to the train operator on your behalf, using the details you have given us.
• We can only submit claims to the train operators we support at the time (listed when you look up your trains). For a train run by one we don't support yet, we tell you before you sign up; if one of your claims is for such a train, we prepare it and give it to you to send yourself, in good time before the operator's deadline.
• We also look back over the last 28 days of your trains when you join, and show you late journeys you may still claim. We only claim the ones you tell us you were on.
• The train operator decides whether to pay and how much, and pays any compensation directly to you (by the method you choose with them, such as PayPal, a charity donation or rail vouchers). We never receive or hold your compensation.

Amounts we show before a claim is decided are estimates, worked out from how your trains ran and the operator's published Delay Repay rules. The operator's decision is final.

3. Your account

• You must be 18 or over and live in the UK to use latemate.
• One account per person. The details you give us (name, address, contact details, ticket and journeys) must be your own, true and kept up to date.
• Keep access to your account, email and chat apps secure. Tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account.

4. Your authority for us to claim

By confirming a claim, you:

• authorise latemate to submit that claim to the train operator in your name, as your agent, including filling in the operator's claim form and agreeing to the operator's own declarations for you;
• confirm that you travelled on that journey with a valid ticket, that the details are accurate, and that you have not already claimed or been compensated for it.

We only submit claims you have confirmed. You can withdraw your authority for a claim that hasn't been submitted yet by telling us, and you can stop all future claims by pausing or deleting your trains or your account.

If you choose to have latemate track claim emails, we give the operator a claims email address made for you; emails sent to it are passed on to your own email address (see the privacy notice).

5. Honest claiming

Delay Repay is only for journeys you actually made. You must not ask us to claim for a journey you didn't make, a ticket that isn't yours, or a journey already claimed or compensated. We may check claims (for example, journeys that overlap, or a ticket used on more than one account), hold or refuse to submit a claim, ask you for proof of travel, and suspend or close an account where we reasonably believe claims aren't genuine. Train operators may investigate claims and act on fraudulent ones.

6. Prices and payment

• Your first month is free. It is one per person; we use the checks described in the privacy notice to stop the same person taking it more than once.
• After that, claims are only submitted while you have a subscription. Without one, we may still tell you when your trains are late, but we hold your claims until you subscribe.
• The subscription costs £1.99 a month and covers every supported claim you confirm, however long the delay, with no per-claim fee. It is charged monthly in advance through our payment provider, Stripe, and renews each month until you cancel.
• If you invite a friend with your link, they get an extra free month, and you get a free month once their first claim is sent (up to 12 a year; not where the accounts appear to belong to the same person).
• We will tell you at least 30 days before any price change takes effect. You can cancel before it does.
• A month with no late trains brings no compensation, and paying for latemate does not guarantee a saving or that any claim will be paid.

7. Cancelling

• You can cancel your subscription at any time in your account. It stays active to the end of the month you have paid for and is not renewed.
• Your right to cancel: you have 14 days from the day you first subscribe to cancel and get a refund. Because you ask us to start straight away, if you cancel within those 14 days we may deduct an amount for the service already provided, in proportion to the time used.
• You can delete your account at any time in Settings. Claims already submitted continue with the operator.

8. What we can and can't promise

We will use reasonable care and skill to follow your trains and to submit the claims you confirm within the operator's time limit (usually 28 days from travel). However:

• train running data comes from third parties and can occasionally be wrong or missing, so we may not spot every late train;
• operators can change their forms, rules or time limits, and can refuse or reduce claims;
• some claims need you to act (for example, to send a ticket photo) before they can be sent;
• an operator's website may show a security check ("I'm not a robot"); we complete it ourselves or with a service that does, and it can delay a claim.

If a claim you confirmed in good time misses the operator's deadline because of our mistake, tell us: we will refund that month's subscription fee. If something goes wrong, contact us and we will try to put it right.

9. Our responsibility to you

• We are not responsible for an operator's decision on a claim, for compensation an operator doesn't pay, or for losses caused by information you gave us being wrong.
• We are not responsible for losses that were not reasonably foreseeable, or for business losses.
• Apart from that, our total responsibility to you is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the problem arose.
• Nothing in these terms limits liability that can't legally be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence or for fraud, or your legal rights as a consumer.

10. Messages and other services

We contact you by email and, if you connect them, by Telegram or WhatsApp. Those services are provided by their own companies under their own terms. Sign-in with Google is provided by Google.

11. Suspending or ending the service

We may suspend or close your account if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms (for example, dishonest claims), giving reasons where we can. If we stop providing latemate altogether, we will give you reasonable notice and refund any subscription you have paid for a period after it ends.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, for example when the service or the law changes. We will tell you about important changes in advance; if you don't agree, you can cancel before they take effect.

13. Complaints and law

If you have a complaint, contact us at info@latemate.app and we will reply within 14 days. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. You can bring a claim in the courts of England and Wales or, if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, in the courts where you live.