Great Western Coffee Shop

Evening all.......this one has probably been done to death elsewhere but in common with many other people, due to the farce last night I was forced to get a taxi home at considerable expense......OK I wasn't "forced" but realistically I wanted to get home sometime before midnight and as FGW were unable to give me any prospect of help I decided to JFDI and sort myself out.

Needless to say, on enquiring this morning as to the prospect of a refund/compensation in respect of this (my hopes weren't high), I was advised by FGW that "we aren't able to compensate for consequential loss" - clearly this is rubbish, it's not that they are "unable" to help, its because FGW have adopted a policy of not making payments in these circumstances...."not prepared to" would have been a more appropriate statement.......but to be honest, unless they aspire to a Ryanair type service (successfully challenged in the Courts) is this a reasonable position for FGW to take, when people have paid for a service which is not forthcoming and there is no contingency in place for many hours?...........and yes I know "weather" is "beyond the control of the rail industry" (the usual catch all when something goes horribly wrong), but surely the onus is on the supplier to make provision, or refund those who do it themselves?

Only up to a point they are only liable to refund what you have paid I am sure the T&Cs clearly exclude consequential loss as do most airlines.  What airlines have to do is put you up until they can get you home. 

Don't forget if they have to give everyone a taxi home in such circumstances (total loss of railway) then:

• a) there are not enough taxis available for everyone by a long shot
• b) the roads could not take the extra traffic is there were
• c) Paddington to Twyford is relatively cheap by taxi compared to Swindon, Bristol, Exeter, Cardiff or beyond!
• d) They delay minutes would not pay for it so
• e) the fares or subsidy would have to increase to pay for it (don't give me the stupendous profits argument it does not wash unless you are a certain railway trade union leader or a journalist and ignore the facts)

I know passengers were frustrated and I have been there myself, but there is only so much that can be done.  Look at all the knock ons to the service today and think that sorting that mess out might also have cost FGW a bob or two!

Sadly, your contract with a train operator specifically excludes consequential loss. You can only appeal to a train company's better nature.

Condition 42 of the National Rail Conditions of Carriage (http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/static/documents/content/NRCOC.pdf#page=20) says:


Your refund/compensation rights are limited to the cost (or a proportion of the cost) of the ticket held. And with FGW that only applies when delays/cancellations are the fault of the rail industry.

To make it clear, I'm not siding with the train operator here. Just pointing out the position vis ^ vis your contract with said train operator.

Personally, I empathise fully with your frustration TaplowGreen.

Could FGW not put on some coaches/ buses to replace?

I know they are in the wrong place but in Cornwall First bus has in the region of 20- 30 double decker buses sat idle during the school summer holidays, as they are only essentially required for their Truro College contracts. Some spend the summer holidays sat doing nothing, others are sent out to replace single deckers on heavily seasonal routes (freeing up the single deckers). It also leaves from what I've heard 120 hours a day short on driver rota in Cornwall not having the college runs, so would surely mean drivers in need of hours as well

I'm imagining that such school/ college contracts exist all across the First bus empire and this situation is common.

Surely one First division could help another out with the use of their otherwise idle buses and get the rail passengers moving.

Whilst I appreciate double decker buses are not suitable for such journeys, are they better than nothing?

Yes the buses may be standing idle, but the drivers are not there either. How easy do you think it would be for First to conjure up both buses and drivers at short notice on a Friday evening in London? Also how many buses would be needed to cover for each train cancelled? I guess you would need one double decker for every two carriages of every train cancelled! That's an awful lot of buses and drivers. 

A Business that cares about its customers doesn't hide behind regulations stating what it doesn't have to do, it asks itself what is the right thing to do and what it can do to help its customers and acts accordingly.

All too often in the case of FGW customers are effectively abandoned with little or no help, information or communication - last night was simply beyond the pale and was the culmination of weeks of unreliability.

With the exception of individual pockets of excellence, FGW customer service is poor, and exhibits all the worst attitudes of a monopoly supplier - its the same old thing - 1st class prices for a 4th class service.

To be frank I don't care about the money, if I thought that the experience of last night would have taught FGW something and that there would be a plan in place to treat customers decently if it happens again but I'm not hopeful......I was at Reading and I know numerous people who were at Paddington last night and it sounds like something out of Dante.

Good because that is a lot stronger base to criticise FGW.  They do need to up their gave on communication in the face of disruption... ...even when they have no information from NR on the timings for resumption.  All we ask is thet they are open and honest (oh and there on the ground)!

You'll also find that their Twitter teams tell you what you want to hear quite often, and then front line staff tell you what they've advise is not possible.

I've sent my complaint to the top now as I lost patience with being fobbed off and not being contacted back when promised.

If you want to send a complaint by email to the top find someone senior's name and then firstname(dot)lastname(at)firstgroup(dot)com works nicely.

(this seems to be the format for most large company's staff email addresses)

It seems delivering on their customer service and promises to customers is a shortfalling within a number of large businesses from my experience recently.

I've had issues with 5 large companies recently, and the only one I can compliment on the way they handled my complaint was Santander, which surprised me as they seemingly have a poor reputation.

If you've got a receipt for the taxi journey it's still worth submitting even though they say they won't reimburse for consequential doesn't mean to say they won't, even if it's a contribution towards.

I suppose the risk of saying we will cover you for consequential loss is that some passengers might go a bit OTT with it, you can imagine the helicopters, chaffueur driven limos all outside Paddington station!!!!!
What I' saying is it's a bit hard to say we will cover for consequential loss but listing all the conditions and exceptions.  By saying they will not cover it means passengers are likely to be a bit more prudent with their options of alternative transport

I reported this back on another thread, but for the record I did submit the receipts with a letter, and got a full refund from FGW!  ;D

A Certain FG Open Access TOC did put on their JCheck feed the following message, when Notwork Fails own testing train took the overheads down and then the fatality at Stevenage, which I think was not supposed to go public.

"Customers are authorised to take onward road transport to their destinations".

Can I just make a plea at this point?

The search facility in the forum software is challenged enough at the best of times.

Therefore can we avoid the temptation to replace Network Rail with other versions of the name or DaFT for the DFT?

Thanks awfully.

What he said - please.  ::)

Agreed - childish and irritating.

"Customers are authorised to take onward road transport to their destinations".

-good to see this pragmatic approach being taken - no doubt the cost can be offset by the huge amounts of compo FGW receive from NR in such circumstances.

It was actually Hull Trains.

And in response to the other thing, make new rules if you want to restrict what I say and how I say it. I always though this was to a legal point (IE non slander/not libellous etc) free and easy speech. Clearly not seeing as im now being ganged up on by two 'mods'.

Unfortunately most of the problems on the railway are caused by NeR. So yes they are a failure and yes they don't work. If they did work then the delays would be less.

Lets take a Quote from East Coast (http://www.eastcoast.co.uk/customer-service/delay-repay/)
"Roughly 15% of delays to our services are caused by things we^re responsible for. 67% are caused by factors Network Rail is responsible for and 19% are due to other train operators. "


This will be my last post, good night.

Hmmm ... not how I read it.  The moderator team was indeed concerned at the level of internal information being posted here, and registered that concern.   But there wasn't any rules or "cease and desist" laid down.   There was also concern that using potentially derogatory terms to describe Network Rail and the Department for Transport may be counterproductive in having them give your views consideration ... I know I've used such terms in the past; it was at a time when we had to spell "Melksham" every time we spoke of the TransWilts, and was done to be noticed rather than listened to.

But ... you post (or don't) at your risk, and we only step in to the standard rules and law rather than making anything up on the fly ;)

I think it was the reaction to the alternative spelling of Network Rail that upset SDS - there's no reference to the level of internal information being published in the most recent posts, unless something was going on behind the scenes.

Considering only the "Notwork Fail" (sic) issue,  I have a degree of sympathy with SDS. bobm's request was polite and should have been enough. But it was quickly followed up by another mod/admin post which (in my opinion) appeared unnecessary and heavy handed.

In addition, in circumstances like this the "like" facility can give the impression of "ganging up".  At least three Admin/mods liked bobm's post, which does appear to be disproportionate public criticism from the mod team, even before SDS had an opportunity to respond. So I can see why he reacted in the way that he did.

when metrics such as these are going on, it's probable that there will be both co-ordination between moderators (ironically to prevent multiple responses in many cases) and also a conversation with the member(s) concerned. That's a general comment, you'll appreciate.


I am, you will note, avoiding getting case-specific.

I'm reminded of one of the prettiest young ladies I ever met.   She was flying from Argentina to Gatwick with a stopover in Mexico City, where I was flying from.   There were lots of large, tired men in the drab terminal gathering for the flight ... and this one syren and I though "who's lucky enough to be siting next to her (for more space, you'll understand!) and it turned out to be me.   She was returning to college where she was writing a thesis about roles and ranks on social media sites such as forums - both formal rankings and informal rankings as to how different members within the same formal group actually end up treating others (and being treated by others) differently and how that behaviour develops over time and history.

Your comment on the "like" facility is well made, John. It's something we're very new to here, and perhaps some of us don't always realise the effect of a single simple click.