Great Western Coffee Shop

Is anyone else finding it impossible to make seat reservations at the moment?  I've been constantly pinging emails at the 'forward@firstgroup.com' address for the past three weeks (4 emails to date) and no one answers.

Has everyone gone on holiday?

I'd go to one of the meet the manager sessions to speak to someone in person but the website only lists dates up to July so thats useless too.

When I tweeted in to ask the same question I got the following

"This email address is not currently active and reservations are currently unable to be processed via forward@firstgroup.com. Very sorry for this. At present reservations can only be made at your local Ticket Office or via 0345 7000125. The email address system is something that is being looked into by our customer relations teams with a view to having it reinstated at somepoint going forward. Apologies for any trouble this has caused you.
There's no fee for seat reservations via any method that we offer. It's free to make a reservation at the Ticket Office and over the telephone."

So I've tried dropping into the ticket office at Reading with my seat request, apparently though they will only do it one month at a time. Quite a reduction in customer service. :-(

So Backwards rather than Forwards. If that e-mail is out of use then the last remnant of the former loyalty programme has finally gone.

The problem with email is their current turn around time so best not accepting emails.

Thanks for the answers. That is absolutely astonishing.  :o
GWR continue to amaze me with just how bad a company can be run, and how hard it tries to hide from its customers. Astonishing.

GWR are bad, but from experience they are one of the better TOCs. If you want to see bad try Southern. They make GWR look exceptionally wonderful and good. I think we would all appreciate what we have a bit more if we lived somewhere on the Victoria Brighton line for example!

Noted. Although I travelled on southern from 2001-2010 without major issue. Perhaps what I'm referring to is the fact that the reservations email address is still advertised on the gwr website, that an automated response telling me the address is no longer monitored, and that it is gwr's own insistence that forces me to have to make such reservations in the first place. It's that constant feeling of pillar to post that grates with me.

Quite agree with you, Nick.  Totally unacceptable and amateurish.

So I called the gwr helpline number today to make my bookings as suggested in laird's post.

I got through to someone quickly, and they understood what I was trying to do. Unfortunately it then took 22 minutes to book 3 reservations, and as I had called to make 60 reservations I ended the call at that point as, extrapolated, I would have been on the phone for 10 hrs to make the complete booking.

Clearly this is a backward step for gwr and all mankind. The assistant revealed that 'call centre migration' was ongoing and no one has migrated the block booking software. Ho hum.

Having ended the call (ironically because I had a train to catch, I realised that I have only been given booking refs and not actual seat numbers. I guess that will be Monday's task to obtain these.

  60 reservations in one go? Wow! Is this related to a season ticket?

Yep.

Unfortunately there is an ongoing issue with the account because of the migration from Intelenet to Capita, it is being worked on and I shall be chasing an update when I'm in the office on Monday. It may feel like a backway step at the moment, but I don't believe there is any intention to get rid of the service.


If it's the ref with 2 letters then some numbers, feel free to message them over, I'm working 0600-1400 Mon-Fri and will be able to check what your seats are.

Thanks for your offer of assistance with this issue, Ollie.  :)

Thanks Ollie for your offer of assistance, and also for providing some background to the problem.

Our IT team have started to transfer pending emails to an alternative email account so our customer relations team can start getting reservations sorted...unfortunately it's been down for a few weeks or so, so there is a bit of a backlog! But the process of getting back to people has started again.

Probably going to be a different email address going forward, but I've not had it confirmed yet what that will be.

Many thanks for posting that update here, Ollie.  ;)

A new email address is available for bulk reservations for season ticket holders. Please use GWRreservations@GWR.com

Thanks for that Ollie  ;D

 Not been having much success using that email address. Is there still a backlog?

Unfortunately so, I'm off work this week so not in a position to check where it's up to at the moment.

Seems to be a problem with seat reservations not actually making it to the trains as well.  3 out of 5 of the past mornings have been the good old bunfight.

Hi Ollie, is there still a backlog? My reservations run out today and I've had no response to any emails to extend my booking.

Unfortunately so, if you private message me the email address you sent from, I'll check where it is in the queue.

I've been  waiting a month for a response to a simple enquiry so I wouldn't hold your breath.

Hopefully they are a bit quicker than they were in the summer. I sent an email in May, by the time they replied at the end of August I'd forgotten why I'd emailed them, and they didn't include the original message to help me out  ;D
I would advise against holding your breath though whilst you wait.

That 'five working days' aim in the Passenger Charter is not worth the paper it's written on. In my experience it has rarely, if ever, been met.

On the one occasion an issue I raised by phone was dealt with to my satisfaction there and then the same day, I was subsequently threatened with prosecution and told the person dealing with my complaint had been wholly wrong resolving the issue. The follow ups over subsequent months, right up to director level, continued to err, both legally and morally. Eventually the original goodwill gesture was reinstated, after I threatened escalation to Transport Focus and the press. That, however, was with no acknowledgement that GWR were ever in the  wrong.

I never received the reinstated goodwill gesture though. I gave up. GWR's woeful, shoddy, inept Customer Services are just not worth bothering with anymore. It doesn't surprise me to learn that one of their better, if not best, employees is leaving to take up a different role with the company - about as far away from Customer Service as one can get.  

And no, this wasn't another Paddington gateline issue. Those continue to happen despite the two years worth of promises and platitudes from Customer Services, Paddington's Station Manager, the Customer Services Senior Manager and Mark Hopwood himself. Mr Hopwood even made promises to my MP that weren't met, when I involved her in the matter.

In short, when dealing with GWR Customer Services, don't hold your breath.

With the end of the year coming up when a large number of annual season tickets will expire (including my own) I was wondering how this will work. Can I book seats through to February now, even though my ticket isn't valid for the whole duration, or do reservations require a live ticket for the whole length??

Given the remarks above I had already marked 'crap response times' as topic No.47 to discuss at meet the manager at Paddington next Thursday - Which, incidentally, is still not mentioned in the GWR website (which only covers dates in July). Ironically this was the topic of my most recent memo to GWR customer services. Last month.

I suspect the latter, simply because you might change your mind about buying. If a lot started doing that....hmm. But I'm sure Ollie will know for sure.

Firstly, may I offer you a warm welcome to the Coffee Shop forum, JAD801.  :)

Secondly, thank you to Ollie for replying here.  :)

However, I am rather concerned at the implication that our new member JAD801 apparently had to resort to contacting Great Western Railway via this forum, as the GWR 'official channels' seem to be so bunged up?

 ???

I can only assume inadequate staffing levels knowing how long a reply takes!

Text to go with last post (original vanished in cyber space!).

And I am about to do likewise on behalf of a friend who has heard nothing six weeks after sending in a delay claim.

I suspect that they're snowed under dealing with all the compliments about GWRs wonderful service........ ;D

Happy New Year one and all.
As an update on this saga I've just called the helpline to make my seat reservations and been told that they cannot make bookings on the phone anymore and all reservations need to be made by email. I made the point that with a 6-8 week turnaround in answering emails this is a dumb idea, but GWR seemingly have a monopoly on those so it shouldn't really surprise me.