Great Western Coffee Shop

UK rail inquiries moving to India 
 
All calls to National Rail Enquiries will be handled by Indian call centres from next March, the BBC has learnt.

The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), which runs the service, said it had agreed an exclusive contract with an Indian firm.
 
more ...

BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8154261.stm)

(feel free to move as appropriate)

Thanks for posting here, RailCornwall: I'm happy to leave this topic just where it is (if only because we don't have a 'Far East' board! ;D )

Well that is a backwards step. What use is speaking to somebody who (probably) hasn't got a clue where you are talking about!

I'll make a mental note not to call National Rail! (not that I ever have..)

NRE are awful as it is without trying to have a conversation about Pwllheli to someone who you can't understand.

Ummmhhhhh !

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=9154307

Well, UK call centres ain't always that great either. I placed a call to Southeastern Customer Services to enquire whether an All Line Rail Rover would be vailid on the High Speed Preview services.  I was promised a ringback with an answer. 2 hours later and nothing so called again. Spoke with a manager this time (well they said they were a manager.....difficult to see their name badge over the phone!) who confirmed that my All Line Rover would not be valid and I needed to purchase a ticket. On arriving at St Pancras I enquired again at the domestic Ticket Office (staffed by EMT), who said that, yes, my ticket was valid on the HS preview. Gateline no problems and guard told me that what Customer Services had told me was 100% wrong. Lesson learnt - don't waste time or money on calls to Customer Services, ask those on the frontline.

A few months I used national rail enquiries and teh call was handled by an Indian call centre. This call led to an argument between myself and the person at the other end as apparently the Heart of Wales line does not exist along with my local station despite my protests that I had used the station a couple of weeks previously. I hung up and called again, this time getting through to a British call centre where I recieved the required information bur also told them what had previously happened with the first call. The reply was that it was a regular occurance with people in India obviously having no knowledge of the UK railway hence many complaint calls were made to the UK call centre along with large numbers of people double checking the information they have been given (usually wrong from what I was told). Now it looks like we now have no choice to use these call centres trefuse to acknowledge the existence of certain lines and stations

They're hopeless! you just can't understand what they're saying but if you point this out then you get accused of racism! thumbs down to ATOC!!!

try asking for a supervisor to make a complaint to. that's even harder than avoiding being labeled a racist for not understanding