Great Western Coffee Shop

For various reasons, came from ludlow today.

Bought a standard return ludlow to newport and because the arriva trains guy could not issue a ticket over ^50 without authorising it (and he didnt have a working phone) I bought a newport to didcot return  standard rather than first.

So I get on at Newport and explain I am going to Reading - my season covers me from Dicot and I wanted to upgrade Newport to Didcot.

Got told I could not do that since I could not go from Didcot to Reading on my season as I had not come via Evesham.  Cue a volley os "yes I can" - "no you cant" exchanges phrased and explained in different way on both parts.

Then I tried - if what you are saying is true, I cannot go from Reading to Didcot on my season ticket even though Didcot is on the route via Evesham.  And I got told "no, not unless you went through Evesham first!"

A further series of yes I can, no you cant until eventually he reluctantly phones some revenue manager at Swindon - I explain to her what I'm doing and she was like, "of course you can"

What worries me about this is either"

1. The TM is confused about a simple fairly straight forward route split

OR

2. His geographical knowledge of the FGW network is so bad he thinks Didcot is somewhere other than it actually is

Had I not been 100% sure I was correct and/or been less assertive, I'd have been forced to pay the higher fare to Reading.

That is really worrying to be honest, if you write a complaint hopefully you can remember name of the person you spoke to on the phone, as they can then back you up.

Not defending the member of staff, but with Newport being an ATW station his managers may feel it is more important for the member of staff to know more about its own routes and ticketing policies. This would lead to not being able to learn or remember FGW stuff as a person can only know so much. Having to remember different routings in Wales is difficult enough without adding on other TOCs. May also be a case of said member of staff being confused as these things are sometimes only understood by a select few from memory without the aid of the system and how can you be expected toknow everything.

On the other hand, this situation is a bit crazy as staff should be clued up a bit more on other routes outside of their area but what can you do? Arriva are unlikely to allow their staff a training day to learn FGW routes so they can pass on information in the fragmented railway system

it was an FGW train manager on a Swansea to paddington train?

Nothing to do with Newport other than my ticket was from there to didcot and that's where I got on