Delay refunds run on clear thresholds, but the rules shift depending on which ticket or subscription was used, and that is where most claims come unstuck. Commuters stuck on a persistently unreliable line also have a different process open to them than one-off claimants do.
Yes, and the tiers are simple: 30 to 59 minutes gets you half your fare back, 60 minutes or more gets the whole thing, and on the high-speed lines — Intercity direct and the Intercity Den Haag–Eindhoven route via Breda — that threshold drops to just 15 minutes. There's a €2.30 minimum payout, and you won't get anything if the delay was announced in advance, caused by another carrier, or down to genuine force majeure like a national power cut. Subscriptions complicate it in one specific way: e-tickets or mobile tickets bought directly through NS only qualify once you hit the 60-minute full-refund tier, not the 50% one, and if you hold an unlimited-travel subscription with no single trip price to refund a percentage of, NS runs a separate structural-delay compensation process instead of a per-trip claim — worth digging into if you're getting hit regularly rather than filing one-off requests each time.