Transport for Wales - customer service

[whole diary]

[grahame]

After struggling to book the SailRail tickets I needed earlier this month, I sent an email to customer service at Transport for Wales describing the problems I'd had - 5th October, that was.   Automatic response:

We do aim to respond to our customers within 10 working days, though this may extend to 20 working days currently.  If you are contacting us with an urgent query or you wish to check the progress of an existing case you may find it quicker to call us on 03333 211 202 or tweet us @TfWRail. To check our current response timescale and the cases we are working on please visit www.tfwrail.wales

Followed this morning (28th October) - 16 working days later by

Thank you for contacting us about the issues with your Sail Rail booking

I am sorry to hear of your dissatisfaction in regards to the issues you faced on the day in question. The details of this have been passed on to the relevant departments and management teams to ensure that action can be taken on the points you have raised. We always listen to our passengers when things go wrong and use the feedback we are given to drive improvement, so I would like to thank you for taking the time to get in touch.

Transport for Wales Rail have ambitious plans for the rail service in Wales and we have already introduced a number of measures and initiatives to improve our customer’s experience when using our network. There are also some major improvements planned for the future, including new trains, major station improvements and the introduction of a metro system on the Valley Lines. Full details can be found here:

https://tfwrail.wales/coming-down-the-track

I hope this illustrates how focused we are as a company on improving our customer’s experience when travelling on our network, now and in the future.

Sorry - but I'm disappointed.  Looks very much like a cut and paste job of a piece of text that basically says "I'm not addressing your point at all and have passed it on to someone else".  Sad it takes 23 days to pass it on. And I've no faith (sorry!) that the person who gets it will do anything with it, let alone get back to me with an answer ...

Am I just very unfortunate it having to wait so long for a null answer - or is this the TfW standard?   I know we criticise GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) sometimes on their customer service responses, but for me TfW have taken the biscuit here!

[Adrian]

I've had some rather similar responses from TfW, including my last grumble a couple of months back about the fact their mobile app doesn't issue e-tickets to stations not on their network.  A dismissive reply accompanied by a £10 travel voucher!  There does seem to be an attitude in customer services at both GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) and TfW (and maybe the others) that they can solve all customer woes by paying out a little cash.

 

[welshman]

Not my experience.  I travelled from Bromsgrove to New Street and back the other day and bought the tickets using the TfW app while I was waiting on the platform.

[Adrian]

You're right - I just downloaded the app again and now it does give me mobile ticket as an option.
Maybe they've made some changes since I first tried.