Great Western Coffee Shop

A great offer for Standard Season Ticket holders is currently available.

Click on

http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Survey.aspx?id=5181

Basically downloading a form from this site allows season ticket holders to go anywhere on FGW First Class for ^20 a day at weekends. A further adult can accompany for ^20 and/or two children at ^10 each. The offer is available until 28 November.

Only problem is FGW's staff don't seem to have been told about it!

Tried the offer on Saturday but Conductor on St Ives Branch didn't know how to issue the special tickets and neither did the booking office at St Erth. Train Manager on the HST from St Erth had heard nothing about it either, but found a ticket called 'Take-a-mate First' on his Avantix Machine which cost ^20 so we used that instead.

I contacted Customer Services by phone who said that all staff were notified, but none of the staff I spoke to had heard anything about it! 

Anybody else had problems with this offer? 

Not really a surprise, only this week was chatting to a TM who had just received the briefing on Club 55! been going since end of September I think?"!

FGW's briefing of staff when it comes to offers is woeful. I had a print-at-home catering voucher (^1 off a ^5+ spend in the buffet) and more than one CH was unaware of the offer. One even went so far as to suggest that 'anyone could've made up that voucher on their computer' !!!

Still, my complaint led to a ^5 catering voucher - one that staff should be aware of!

And returning to the OP..... the hunt is on to find the cheapest 1 month season ticket!

Ahaha....

Devonport - Dockyard ^8.50 for a 1 month Season, plus a few quid for a photo for the season photocard, is worth it for 2x ^20 First Class Returns.

"Travel is from and to stations served by First Great Western only."

Hmmm - bad wording. Does that mean it's not availablr to / from stations served by other operators too?

Spoken to a few TMs, and most of them have (1 exception) said they haven't heard of the offer.

I see they've removed the ^10 standard class offer at weekends!

Business has picked up - little room in Standard class at popular times at weekends...

Weekend First is still available. Although its not the same fare system as it used to be.

Received a reply from FGW today stating that a Retail Brief was issued to all staff on 25 October, but "...clearly something went wrong in Cornwall"  Apparently the Retail code for the ticket is BED.

No brief received in London either. 

Brief was indeed received on 25th October.

How are these briefs delivered to the staff? Verbally from a line manager or pinned to noticeboards in staff/mess rooms? Or is there some sort of weekly bulletin that staff must sign for?

Understandable that they may be missed if just pinned to a noticeboard. Staff heading straight to the kettle.....

Asking out of curiosity - I have no idea about internal communications for rail staff.

Retail brief is a few pages document that gets dumped on a table or notice board somewhere.

You will usually find ticket offices do read the brief's they get sent - as they will have to know how to account for it.