Transport for London - thoroughly decent chaps!

I paid for an annual travel card at the end of last December (as I do every year).

Our office shut down at the end of March. I didn't cancel my travel card and ask for a refund straight away, because I thought lock down would only last a couple of weeks and it wasn't worth the hassle of cancelling and paying for another one.

By the end of May, I accepted that this lock down was going to drag on for a while longer and asked for a refund. TfL refunded me seven months' worth a couple of days later. So far so good.

To my pleasant surprise, they sent me an email a couple of days ago, which said that as I hadn't used my travel card for the whole of April and May, they'd refund me another two months' worth.

The money's not in my account yet, but fingers crossed.
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UPDATE 15/7:

1. The second refund appeared in my bank account today.

2. C. left this comment, but then deleted it, not sure why, because he makes good points:

Remember that an annual travelcard is priced at 10 months and 13 days, so a refund of "7 months" is only approximately 67% back rather than the 58% back that would be expected on a pro-rata basis. In other words there is no such thing as a 7 month refund - the entire thing is refunded and you are re-charged for a 3.5 month travelcard, which is a third of the price of a 10.5 month (=annual) ticket.

Yes, that is what they used to do, and fair enough. But I can confirm that my annual travel card cost £2,400 on 31/12/2019 and they sent me refunds totalling £1,812, which looks like 9/12 of £2,400 to me.

Two Zone 1-5 peak single fares on the tube is £9.40 and an annual ticket is £2468. So if your commute is a single tube journey each way and you make no other journeys, you need to travel 263 days a year, which is probably cheaper to pay as you go. If your commute is multi-modal or if you travel for leisure, then a travelcard is probably worth it.

Yes, I probably commuted in fewer than 263 days a year so on that basis, the travel card was more expensive. But all the other journeys within town, in the evening and at weekends were effectively free. Plus I didn't need to bother tapping out, I could just walk past the queue at the stupid machine, which was also of value to me (especially if there was a long queue and I was in a hurry or it was raining).