Great Western Coffee Shop

A promotion for people from Exeter is currently on the FGW Website offering a free return ticket from either Exeter St Davids or Exeter Central to several destinations in Devon and Cornwall (link below.)
http://www.iworkforfgw.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=104&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Interesting. Wouldn't say passenger numbers were lacking though!

From Exeter's Express and Echo 14th June


TRAIN FIRM 'ACCIDENTALLY' OFFERED FREE TICKETS
BY JOANNE COCHRANE

11:40 - 14 June 2008



Rail bosses have been forced to withdraw an offer which could have seen thousands of people travel for free on the rails this summer.

An offer on the First Great Western website stated that customers could apply for a free return ticket from either Exeter St David's or Exeter Central to a number of destinations in Devon.

But the trial was never intended to be made to the general public - just a select target group identified by Exeter City Council's travel plan department.



But it somehow made it onto publicly-accessible areas of the rail operator's website. Dozens of emails about the offer were circulated and hundreds of people tried to access it.

One of them, an administrator at Exeter College, has now called the offer "misleading".

She said: "When I read about the offer I emailed it to one of my colleagues and she contacted First Great Western. They told her they didn't know anything about it.

"Lots of schools could benefit from something like this. We often take groups out. It's too good an offer to miss.

"It's very misleading."

A spokesman for First Great Western said: "The offer was never meant to be made to the general public.

"Our marketing department was working with Exeter City Council and its travel plan department. They were contacting a target group of people to try and get them to look at alternatives to car travel.

"Each submitted application had to be authorised by our marketing department. It was supposed to be password protected. The form should have been hidden.

"We've now had to pull out of the scheme."

The stations included in the offer were Dawlish Warren, Dawlish, Teignmouth, Newton Abbot, Torquay, Paignton, Totnes, Plymouth, Digby and Sowton, Exmouth and Barnstaple.

Up to 10 adults could have travelled on one ticket, plus up to 10 toddlers and another 10 children up to 16.

The blunder is the latest in a series of woes for the train firm, which is coming under increasing pressure to improve its performance.

Figures released by the Office of Rail Regulation in March showed that First Great Western had the least punctual service in Britain and it was branded "unacceptable" by ministers.

In January, passengers were hit by above-inflation price hikes across the network, although FGW's poor performance prompted some customers to refuse to pay their fares.

The ORR is overseeing a joint performance improvement plan, developed by Network Rail and FGW, aimed at improving performance.

FGW communications director Sue Evans told the Echo: "We are going to honour all the tickets that people have already applied for. We have 438 applications."

Nice to see they managed to include in the info about poor performance  ::)

The E&E is the biggest load of french connection United Kingdom I have ever had the misfortune of reading.

The Echo were even advertising this offer without even checking the details with FGW:


However, considering they only received 438applications shows how few people must take note of the E&E (I hope)  ::)

The promotion was meant to be targeted at a newly built housing estate (link below.)
http://www.iworkforfgw.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=115&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Popularly known as the Excess and Error in this household. Only fit for wrapping chips in. ::) ::)

... and, in the context of oversights  ::) :

With apologies for our slight delay in doing so, TheSprinterMeister - welcome to the Coffee Shop forum!

Chris  ;)

Why thank you kind sir! 8)

I lob an intro in the appropiate section in due course!