With many students returning home following Lancaster University’s decision to suspend face-to-face contact hours, and cancelling exams where possible, lots of students have been left wondering how to cut costs now they’re no longer living in Lancs.

Most students living in town will have bought a Stagecoach bus pass this year, and for those of us whom bought a three-term pass, or have already paid upfront for the Summer Term’s pass we’ve wasted our money, because we’re not in Lancaster to be able to use the pass!

So that’s money down the drain for us, isn’t it? Right?

WRONG.

Turns out, we can claim a refund from Stagecoach for our third-term pass if we want to. Although there is an admin fee charged on top of the refund, students will have most of the cost of the third term’s pass returned to them.

We LOVE a sweet refund

Here’s how, from a student who’s done it:

Firstly, I just sent an email to the Lancaster branch of Stagecoach – [email protected] – and they got back to me in a couple of days. Because I purchased a Stagecoach Smart Ticket, they gave me a new email address to contact – [email protected] – and they said that the refund would have a £10 or 10 percent admin charge deducted from it.

As soon as I sent the email, I got an automated response: “We are currently dealing with a high volume of refund requests and will contact you as soon as we can, we appreciate your patience during this time.”

Six days later, I received another email that just said: “Hi, your refund has been processed. Here are the details of your refund.”

How much do you get back?

I got £75.66 back from my refund, and that was with the admin charge already deducted from it – however, the refund might vary from student to student depending on the type of bus pass that you’ve bought.

So there you have it – with a few emails, and a bit of patience, you can get some money back for your now-useless bus pass! And then you can put that money towards paying your rent that hasn’t been cancelled.

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