Title: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: GaryM on November 16, 2012, 22:12:55 Last week my mother managed to leave a bunch of keys in the toilet on one of the platforms of a FGW station. We went back the next day but unfortunately they were already gone. Hoping a cleaner had found them and handed them in, we asked at the station office only to be told that if they had been found then they would have been sent on to the lost property office in Bristol.
No problem I thought so I looked on the FGW website to find that I should allow 5 days before calling the lost property phone number to give lost property time to arrive and be checked in which I did. So today I phoned the lost property line to find that I end up at what appears to be an Indian call centre. With all due respect to them they are just doing their job so it's not their fault but having to explain exact details of all the keys and then explain what a "Ford" key and a "Renault" key actually was didn't really inspire much confidence. The operator then tells me to hold the line while they contact Bristol. Knowing that the information I had tried explaining to them was just going to be relayed onto someone else (Chinese whispers springs to mind here), it didn't really fill me with a lot of hope that the keys would be located. As it turned out though that was irrelevant anyway because Bristol apparently weren't answering their phone so I was just told to just try calling again later. I ended up ringing twice more only to get a different operator and having to go through the same rigmarole of describing the lost keys each time but it was the same outcome every time with the Bristol office apparently not answering their phone! It seemed ludicrous that a middle man in India was just being used to relay information from me to Bristol so I asked for a direct number for Bristol only to be told that they don't know the actual number is so they can't give it out to me ::) By now I'm pulling my hair out because all I want to do is to speak to someone in Bristol and give them a first-hand description of the keys so I can find out if they've ended up there but it seems like an almost impossible task. How on earth are people supposed to try and get their lost property back? Short of me actually getting in a car and driving to the Bristol lost property office in person, does anyone have a direct number or know how I can get in contact with the Bristol office without having to go through the Indian call centre? Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: JayMac on November 16, 2012, 23:26:03 Whilst I don't know a direct number you could perhaps try contacting FGW via twitter or their Facebook page.
I appreciate you may not use twitter or Facebook, but there's a good chance that if you do, contact with the lost property office can be expedited. https://twitter.com/FGW https://www.facebook.com/FirstGreatWestern Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: John R on November 16, 2012, 23:38:32 I had a similar experience recently when I left my season ticket on the train on the way home. The lost property call centre was worse than useless.
Fortunately I retrieved the situation by popping down to the station 3 hours later when the same set was on its way back to London, the TM let me board to have a look for it, and the ticket had been handed in to the catering crew. Phew! Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: EBrown on November 16, 2012, 23:51:50 I'm currently hearing a lot of rumours about what First Great Western are outsourcing to Serco.
Rumours I have heard so far are: Online retail support - Serco Some of CS - Serco One (or more) tweeters - Serco Serco does happen to have a big presence in India... Some people have presented me with some convincing ish evidence, but only rumours at present. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: JayMac on November 17, 2012, 00:11:09 Well Serco did purchase the Indian company Intelenet Global Services who in turn had purchased FirstInfo.
First Great Western's Customer Services is now contracted to Serco. Some stuff like twitter and Facebook is, I believe, still, in the main, 'in house' with Serco taking over at the weekends for example. Paging Ollie for a fuller explanation of the current situation regarding FGW CS (phone, email, snail mail), social media, telesales etc. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: Chris from Nailsea on November 17, 2012, 00:21:30 Meanwhile, GaryM, if it would help: I'd be happy to call in at the lost property office at Bristol Temple Meads on your behalf to make enquiries.
Depending on whether we get any other suggestions here on the forum, please do feel free to contact me with details by PM, and I'll turn up on their doorstep on Monday morning, if required ... ;) Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: GaryM on November 17, 2012, 12:17:13 Thanks guys. I've just tried to phone again but it's turning out to be fruitless. The operator is clearly just reading from an on-screen script and after describing all my lost keys yet again I was put on hold so they could do a check. Approximately 10 seconds later they came back and said nothing had been found matching my description. There is no way they contacted Bristol in that time and I can't believe they managed to type in enough details to do thorough enough search in that short time scale so I have no faith whatsoever that a proper check is being done on the lost property inventory. It is just so frustrating.
I asked if I could speak to someone in Bristol direct and was again told that they have no number they can give me but said I could visit the Bristol office in person if I wanted to. This is really appalling customer service from FGW when they are raking in so much profit. I don't do facebook but I've now made my first ever tweet to @FGW so I shall see if there is any response and go from there. @Chris - I really appreciate your offer to go to the office for me so many thanks for this. If no other options turn up I may well be in touch to take you up on your offer. It really shouldn't be like this though...customers having to rely on other customers to help them out ::) I wonder how many people actually get their lost property back which IS actually sitting in the store room at Bristol. Probably not many if my experience is anything to go by. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: GaryM on November 17, 2012, 13:39:23 Well I got a reply to my tweets only to confirm that other than visiting the lost property office in person, the only way of contacting them is via the Indian call centre. Completely useless and not helpful at all. Any FGW customers better just pray they don't lose an item on a FGW train or premises because even if they have it there seems to be slim chance of actually getting it back.
I'll certainly be writing a letter of complaint to FGW about their unacceptable lost property service. It's clearly profit before customer service with this company. I also have a good mind to make a FOI request asking them to provide me with statistics on how many lost property items they took in last year and how many were actually reunited with their owners. I bet it's not many. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: JayMac on November 17, 2012, 13:57:31 Sorry to hear of your ongoing problems GaryM.
I will just point out though that an FOI request will be fruitless. Freedom of Information legislation does not apply to private companies. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: GaryM on November 17, 2012, 16:21:17 Good point. Clouded by my frustration I actually forgot about that. I guess any figures will remain their secret.
Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: Timmer on November 17, 2012, 17:09:14 I agree, very poor service from FGW on this occasion. There are just some services that you NEED to speak to someone on the ground in the UK like lost property. How on earth can that be done thousands of miles away in India? Red card FGW. Not good enough.
I thought companies were scaling back the use of overseas call centres after so many complaints from customers. Obviously not. With regards to Twitter. If it's manned by an outside company on weekends, it might be worth tweeting them again during the working week where you should be replied to by someone who actually works for FGW in the UK. They are usually very good. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: phile on November 17, 2012, 20:58:51 Well Serco did purchase the Indian company Intelenet Global Services who in turn had purchased FirstInfo. Customer Services should be done in house not outsourced at all whether in India or not. Terrible Customer Service.First Great Western's Customer Services is now contracted to Serco. Some stuff like twitter and Facebook is, I believe, still, in the main, 'in house' with Serco taking over at the weekends for example. Paging Ollie for a fuller explanation of the current situation regarding FGW CS (phone, email, snail mail), social media, telesales etc. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: Ollie on November 17, 2012, 21:21:40 Paging Ollie for a fuller explanation of the current situation regarding FGW CS (phone, email, snail mail), social media, telesales etc. Facebook: Me and Jo Twitter: Me and Serco Phones/Emails/Letters: Can vary between Serco and the in house FGW team. Telesales/Web Support: Serco Note: Outsourced or not, Serco have guidlines from FGW to follow and the response would be the same whether directly employed by FGW or not :) Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: GaryM on November 17, 2012, 21:34:28 The person who replied to me on twitter was "Alex". Does anyone know if he's from Serco or the in-house FGW team?
Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: thetrout on November 17, 2012, 21:59:54 FGW Lost Property has gone massively down hill over the years. Back in 2008 I left my holdal on the Luggage Rack after being distracted my by at the time employer phoning me to find out why I was late (Cogload Jn Point Failure ;) )
Anyway I phoned FGW Customer Services and they said they wouldn't have anything on their systems for 48 hours at least so try calling back then. Fortunately I never needed to as the bag was taken off at PAD and booked into Lost Property and the staff there had a brief look inside to see if there was any form on identification. Fortunately there were some things in the bag and my understanding following a conversation I had was that the person who searched my bag was very switched on regarding prescription pharmaceutical products ;) They phoned my Doctors Surgery and asked them to get a message to me that the bag would be in Bristol after lunch the same day! I was quite frankly amazed! ;D However since then things have gone massively down hill. Earlier this Year I left a Jiffy Bag with an HP RAID Controller Battery inside it. Only ^25 worth so not the end of the world, they're just hard to get hold of. The problem was the battery was faulty and anyone looking at it would have seen that (It exploded inside the server!! :o ). HP however always demand faulty parts are returned and they'll be on the phone to you every day, several times a day even at weekends if you fail to do so. Anyhow after the third day of them calling I slowly was considering purchasing a Battery off eBay and sending it off. Sadly they are serial numbered so that was not an option. Fortunately FGW confirmed that my package was in Bristol Lost Property Office and gave me a reference number to quote when collecting. I went down only to be told it was actually in London. Later in the week I went down and handed over the reference number. Shortly the chap came back and thrust a MacBook Pro under my nose. Tempting as it was to pick that up and leave I told him that it was the wrong item and asked him to double check. He seemed to think this was impossible. Further calls confirmed my battery was STILL in Bristol and I went back to get it the following week. By this time HP had sent me an invoice for the non returned part. I was unaware of this until I returned home 3 days later and I had already sent the item off. Since then they refused to accept that I sent it back despite providing a tracking number and then sent a Debt Collection Agency after me. Long story short I wrote to them stating the item had been returned and was delayed due to "human error". They wrote back to me asking for Names/Roles/Departments of everyone I'd spoken to at FGW, the time/date train I lost the item on and the ticket for the train I was on and finally a copy of a bank statement showing I had paid for the return postage (Would love to know how that works when it was prepaid by HP...). I wrote back to them with the same tracking information and stated that if they wished to pursue the matter then to send court papers to my local magistrates. Letter arrived 5 days later saying the dispute was had been closed ;D Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: EBrown on November 17, 2012, 23:45:21 The person who replied to me on twitter was "Alex". Does anyone know if he's from Serco or the in-house FGW team? Given Ollie has stated he is the only directly employed tweeter, that would make:Jess, Reg, Paul, Dan, Alex, Toni & John (may have missed some, my memory is not what it used to be) all Serco staff. So Ollie, do they work at Plymouth because Jess told me she works from there? Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: Southern Stag on November 18, 2012, 01:05:46 Plymouth was the location of the old FGW in-house customer service department. They also handled, and possibly still do handle customer service work for other TOCs, both First and non-First. I believe East Coast customer service is based at Plymouth for example.
Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: Ollie on November 18, 2012, 03:18:15 The person who replied to me on twitter was "Alex". Does anyone know if he's from Serco or the in-house FGW team? Given Ollie has stated he is the only directly employed tweeter, that would make:Jess, Reg, Paul, Dan, Alex, Toni & John (may have missed some, my memory is not what it used to be) all Serco staff. So Ollie, do they work at Plymouth because Jess told me she works from there? Yep they are in Plymouth Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: Tim K on November 19, 2012, 08:50:36 I had a similar experience recently when I left my season ticket on the train on the way home. The lost property call centre was worse than useless. Fortunately I retrieved the situation by popping down to the station 3 hours later when the same set was on its way back to London, the TM let me board to have a look for it, and the ticket had been handed in to the catering crew. Phew! If you left your ticket in coach C on the 18:15 London Paddington towards Reading on Friday (16-Nov) then it was me who handed in the ticket to the catering crew! Tim Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: John R on November 19, 2012, 09:02:23 No, it was on the 1730 Paddington to Taunton a few days earlier, but I'm sure there is an equally careless commuter somewhere who will soon be appreciative of your action, (at least once the ticket works its way through the system!).
Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: LiskeardRich on November 19, 2012, 09:19:59 A bit of google brings up 01752 835777 for lost property. I'm assuming this goes to Plymouth rather than India, not sure if this will be any more fruitful.
The call centre doesnt need to call Bristol though, All items are electronically logged on a database, and they just type in a full description and it either brings up a yes or no. I'm sure I read this somewhere on this forum before possibly posted by CfN or BNM Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: GaryM on November 19, 2012, 17:45:14 It's the typing of the full description to search the database for a lost item which is where the problem is when there are clearly some communication issues.
The frustration I have is that when describing the lost keys to the Indian call centre operators, on all occasions I've had to repeat what I'm telling them to try and make them understand the description I'm giving. So you can probably appreciate why I've now lost all confidence that they've fully understood my description and why I no longer trust that any search criteria they might be typing into the computer acurately reflects what I've told them or is even spelt correctly which is what a computer system relies on to find data being asked for. It therefore seems the only way to get peace of mind that the inventory is being searched correctly is by speaking to someone on the ground in the Bristol office where there will be no communication issues, but as this clearly can't be done by phone, the only way is to visit in person which for a majority of people will be a massive inconvienience in terms of time and cost. Maybe FGW would like to offer me a free return ticket to Bristol so I can do this without being out of pocket. Thanks for posting the 01752 number. I'll give it a try but I'm guessing I will probably just be told to call the main FGW lost property line. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: inspector_blakey on November 19, 2012, 23:33:43 In the interests of generating a bit of debate, I'm going to offer another point of view on this situation. Lost property is a nightmare for train companies to deal with, and for every item that is being earnestly looked for there will be many more that simply moulder in a lost property office somewhere until the company has to dispose of them one way or another. All of this costs money which could, arguably, be spent on improving the train service itself.
I have lost items on the railway myself: on one occasion I did manage to retrieve it through a TOC lost property office. On the others I didn't. However on each occasion I took the attitude that it was my own stupid fault that I had left things behind, and whilst I was grateful if the train company was able to assist I also realized that they owed me nothing if they weren't able to. On a couple of occasions in the last few months I have experienced at first hand some customers who seemed to think it was perfectly acceptable to give me grief and behave obnoxiously because they had lost something that had not subsequently been turned in to lost property: there seemed to be very little concept of personal responsibility. Whilst I'm not suggesting that this was the case in the situation under discussion, lost property can be a much bigger source of conflict for front-line staff than your average customer might realize. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: ellendune on November 20, 2012, 20:21:01 In the interests of generating a bit of debate, I'm going to offer another point of view on this situation. Lost property is a nightmare for train companies to deal with, and for every item that is being earnestly looked for there will be many more that simply moulder in a lost property office somewhere until the company has to dispose of them one way or another. All of this costs money which could, arguably, be spent on improving the train service itself. Of course it will moulder in some lost property office somewhere if the owner cannot find out if it has been handed in there. Also they do (not unreasonably) charge for retruning lost property so the cost argument should not apply. On a couple of occasions in the last few months I have experienced at first hand some customers who seemed to think it was perfectly acceptable to give me grief and behave obnoxiously because they had lost something that had not subsequently been turned in to lost property: there seemed to be very little concept of personal responsibility. Whilst I'm not suggesting that this was the case in the situation under discussion, lost property can be a much bigger source of conflict for front-line staff than your average customer might realize. Yes but that is a long way from making it virtually impossible to get it back without making a journey to Bristol on the off-chance that it might be there. We may bemoan that passengers are now called customers, but I am affraid this is yet another example that we still need a sea change in the attitude of the railway to dealing with its customers. What other industries call 'customer service'. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: IndustryInsider on November 20, 2012, 21:02:28 We may bemoan that passengers are now called customers, but I am affraid this is yet another example that we still need a sea change in the attitude of the railway to dealing with its customers. What other industries call 'customer service'. I agree with many of your points, but I'm not so sure other industries are quite so different. In my dealings with many different companies representing many different industries over the years, it seems that as soon as you want to do something slightly out of the ordinary it is very hard to sort it out and the end result is often frustration with an Indian call centre clerk who can't help. Lost property is an awkward one. Most people losing a set of keys wouldn't bother to chase them up as they will have spares, many other items are insignificant like umbrellas, then you get the valuables and sentimental items that would mean the world to the owner if they were to be reunited with them. Having a central office is probably better than having to phone round lots of different stations/offices like you used to have to do, though perhaps having a direct dial telephone number to it (specifically for lost property only) would certainly be better than facing the experience Gary has. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: Ollie on November 20, 2012, 21:49:08 The only issue I can think of for having a direct number through to Lost Property at Bristol is you would then need more staff in place in order to deal with an increased volume of calls and still continue running of the office the front counter and updating the database.
Not sure if any of my colleagues know how many staff are actually on duty in lost property at Bristol at any given time? Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: ellendune on November 20, 2012, 21:58:39 I agree with many of your points, but I'm not so sure other industries are quite so different. In my dealings with many different companies representing many different industries over the years, it seems that as soon as you want to do something slightly out of the ordinary it is very hard to sort it out and the end result is often frustration with an Indian call centre clerk who can't help. I agree, some companies, particulalrly UK companies are starting to compete with the ofshore production by doing customer service better and responsing to the request for the out of the ordinary. I guess that while train companies have problems of overcrowding rather than a need to fill empty seats there is little incentive to improve customer service. Lost property is an awkward one. Most people losing a set of keys wouldn't bother to chase them up as they will have spares, many other items are insignificant like umbrellas, then you get the valuables and sentimental items that would mean the world to the owner if they were to be reunited with them. Having a central office is probably better than having to phone round lots of different stations/offices like you used to have to do, though perhaps having a direct dial telephone number to it (specifically for lost property only) would certainly be better than facing the experience Gary has. I agree a central office is probably the best option, but the quid pro quo is you have to provide good communications so that people can find out if their property is there! Many years ago I left my wallet on a train, and the first I knew was when a railway lost property person rang saying that it had been found and would I like them to send it to my local station where could collect it from the parcels office after a certain time. There are various reasons why this would be difficult now (not least the end of the parcels business). But it was good customer service. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: GaryM on November 20, 2012, 23:32:47 For future reference, the 01752 20835777 phone number no longer works so the offshore call centre is the only line of communication.
Most of the lost keys on the ring aren't particularly important and could easily be replaced at little cost, however the two car keys are going to cost the best part of ^400 to replace and get cut/coded to the cars so understandably my parents don't really want to fork out this kind of money until they are absolutely sure the keys aren't sitting in the Bristol lost property office which is now going to require a personal visit by someone to ascertain this. To add to the discussion in the previous few posts, I don't think a direct line to the lost property office is necessary but certainly a UK based call centre where there is going to be no or little communication issues and where you at least feel reassured that they have tried to do their best to correctly search the inventory. Something that certainly hasn't been the case with the offshore call centre in this particular instance. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: Chris from Nailsea on November 20, 2012, 23:37:31 The offer is still there, GaryM: send me a PM with the details if you'd like me to call in on them at BRI.
Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: thetrout on November 21, 2012, 03:47:15 Isn't there a big flaw with typing in a description to a Database though?
Surely it's only as good as the person who's made the "found" log in the first place? Whilst I don't want to go down the What If's route. Surely it is plausible that some staff for whatever reason haven't listed all the details. Like for example: Black Laptop Case - Contains Brown Laptop - 15" screen - Assorted Papers Black Laptop Case with Shoulder Strap, Damaged side clip, HP ProBook 4520s Laptop with damaged bottom panel - Serial No: 1C97PADPLY, Bank Statement and Insurance Documents, Pack of Spearmint Soft Mints, Suspicious looking magazine with fruity images Now a Brown Laptop could be one of hundreds. Also the staff might put in 16" screen (which are in circulation on some models) But if the actual TFT part is 15" or 15.4" or 15.6" then those should be correct measurements recorded retrospectively. A Staff Member may not have been aware of this. So, could I be right in saying an accurate description from the property owner could cause a false-positive when FGW may have actually retrieved the bag with, laptop and porn mag? ::) :P :o 8) ;D Incidentally one of my friends lost his wallet on the train last Friday. He has also had the pains of trying to deal with the Indian Call centre who keep telling him to "Call Back Tomorrow". They also couldn't grasp that he had a 10 Trillion Dollar note inside siting that no money exists. 1) He found it on the floor a few years ago. 2) Such money does exist in Zimbabwe ;) ::) Perhaps Gary's issue isn't as uncommon as we'd want to believe? Not in the lighter side, but did anyone spot what I did there? ;) ;D Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: grahame on November 21, 2012, 06:38:35 Isn't there a big flaw with typing in a description to a Database though? Yes ... but are we sure that's actually what's done? Is it as simple / straightforward as that? Surely there's bound to be some sort of categorisation - check boxes for keys, phone, sweet, umbrella, laptop, cuddly toy, food items, wallet, etc, with subsections therein which should quickly reduce the search; the call centre operator may indeed be typing in the description, but on a clever system keywords will result in other popup boxes popping up subsections, and a woolly match capability may come up with "it could be this" offers. Just because the public facing interface doesn't look very clever doesn't mean there isn't a clever system based on decades of experience behind it - lost items have always been a nightmare for the railways after all. Of course, there will be times even with sophisticated matching that things go wrong. If thetrout left his laptop with that serial number on any train (or on the platform at Frome!) I suspect he might be offered any other laptops left on the 19:45 Paddington to Plymouth ... Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: IndustryInsider on November 21, 2012, 14:12:00 2) Such money does exist in Zimbabwe ;) ::) Not since 2009 it doesn't! Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: johoare on November 21, 2012, 21:41:15 I've not lost anything (other than.. see below).. on a a train since the days when Reading had a lost property office also and they had a phone number too that took me direct to them.. I got it back the next day...I am hoping there might have been a lot less "festering" lost property in those days
Having said that.. (And just so no one digs up an old post of mine)... I did lose a bag containing my purse a couple of years ago on a Paddington to Maidenhead train.. and thanks to British Transport police at Reading (who rang me not long after I realised it was lost and had found my details) and the kind staff at Reading not sending it to Bristol straight away after that, I was able to pick it up the next day from Reading.. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: Chris from Nailsea on November 23, 2012, 20:24:43 From London 24 (http://www.london24.com/news/toys_lost_on_london_underground_donated_to_salvation_army_1_1706861):
Quote Toys lost on London Underground donated to Salvation Army A mountain of children^s toys collected by Transport for London^s (TfL) lost property office have been donated to The Salvation Army just in time for Christmas. For the sixth year running, TfL have given over 300 lost toys to the Deptford branch of The Salvation Army as part of their Christmas Present Appeal. The charity will now work alongside Lewisham Council to distribute the toys to those who may otherwise have gone without this festive period. All the toys, ranging from dolls and play sets, to board games and electronic gadgets, had been left on the London transport network and had gone unclaimed for over three months. Paul Cowan, Operations Performance Manager of the Lost Property Office, said: ^It is a sad fact that many children go without at this time of year. It is great to be able to provide a little bit of joy and excitement for those who may not be as fortunate as others. It is also satisfying knowing that although the toys have not been given to their original owners, they will still be loved and enjoyed just the same.^ Captain Kevin Stanbury of The Salvation Army^s Deptford Community Centre, said: ^We work in the heart of the community and with the increase in the cost of living, many people that we work with were struggling to see how they would be able to give even the most basic gift to their children. This donation means that children who would have gone without this year will now have gifts to open on Christmas morning. It really does make a difference!^ The TfL lost property office has received over 15 million items since it was established in 1933. Last year, over 220,000 items were handed in with many strange items including false teeth, wedding dresses, a puffer fish, breast implants, an urn of ashes and even a parachute ending up in the office. Around a quarter of items found on the network are restored to their owner but items not claimed are donated to charities or sold at auction. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: thetrout on November 24, 2012, 20:00:22 The Puffer Fish intrigues me... Perhaps thetrout shall become BakerlooLinePufferFish ;D ;D :P :P
Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: GaryM on December 16, 2012, 00:06:54 Well it's now time to conclude this saga.
Following a PM on this board from Jo (FGW) who offered to contact the station manager at Bristol Temple Meads on my behalf, I was extremely grateful for her offer of help and thought this would be the best possible avenue so I sent her details of the lost keys but that turned out to be a complete waste of time because I never heard anything back from her, not even an acknowlegement, so it seems that all of the FGW customer service areas are as unreliable as each other ::) I was about to take Chris up on his offer (thanks again Chris) but a trip to the region then cropped up so I thought it might be a good idea to take a detour and drop into Temple Meads station which I did today. What I discovered when I arrived at the lost property office was almost unbelievable and it's no wonder FGW end up with so much unclaimed lost property to dispose of. It's actually even more of a shambles than I originally thought it was. On arriving at the lost property desk I asked the staff member on duty about the lost keys. He then just pointed to two large A4 folders and told me that if the keys had been found then the details would be in there somewhere. He opened one of the folders and to my amazement it was just packed to the brim with sheets of paper containing hand-written details of every lost property item that had been handed in. Slightly puzzled I questioned him about the so called database and asked why he couldn't just search it on the computer. He then proceeded to tell me that descriptions of all lost property items were just hand-written into the folders by the staff at Bristol and the A4 sheets then get periodically faxed(!) off to Plymouth where someone there then enters details into the database which the Indian call centre uses to search on. He said the Bristol office don't have access to the lost property database and they just have to manually look through the folders if someone comes to the office enquiring about a lost item! I almost had to lift my jaw off the floor. The words FGW, dark ages, arse and elbow spring to mind here. Seeing some of the entries in the folders, not only were there hundreds of them for the past month alone spanning many pages but some of the hand writing wasn't that easy to read either, so factor in that plus the poor quality that you usually get on the receiving end of a fax, then someone at Plymouth trying to decipher the text from that and type something meaningful into the database that someone at the Indian call centre might be able to understand. Not to mention the fact that the descriptions entered all seemed pretty brief and nothing to really to help an owner identify some of the items as specifically being theirs. I must have seen at least 20 iPhones with the description simply being "iPhone". I'm surprised anything gets reunited with it's owner at all. God help anyone who loses an item on FGW property and good luck trying to get it back even if FGW do actually have it in their lost property stock room! I have to give credit to the guy at the lost property office though because he was very helpful and spent a good 10 minutes pain stakingly going through hundreds of hand-written enties in the folder for the past five weeks but unfortunately he drew a blank so the keys either didn't end up at the FGW lost property or the hand-writing of any entry for them wasn't deciperable but it looks like that avenue is now closed anyway. Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: johoare on December 16, 2012, 00:10:07 And the best thing is.. I bet they are there... They just can't locate them due to their (very archaic) system...
Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: GaryM on December 16, 2012, 00:18:31 I guess we'll never know ::) I now seem to have exhaused every possible way of finding out :(
Title: Re: Lost Property Shambles! Post by: johoare on December 16, 2012, 00:19:30 Maybe Ollie could help since Jo has already offered her help? They may have contacts...
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