Not what I call Customer Service

[whole diary]

[basset44]

Okay it was a long shot but I thought and write to FGW^▸ (First Great Western) about our delay from London.

It cost ^120.00 for two singles and I thought that has we were delayed by signal failure, which I understand is not FGW fault, there would be a chance of some compansation in vouchers which FGW could claim back from NR^» (Network Rail - home page).

Alas the letter arrived back saying although the 18.45 from London arrived Cardiff forty severn minutes late
it was less than and hour.

Not even a small gesture.

So my next trip is by Coach

[John R]

I'm not sure what you were expecting. The rule is an hour's delay for compensation to be due and it wasn't an hour. If they had offered you something then would they offer anyone else who complained when the delay was less than an hour, and where would they draw the line?

Your journey took 2 hrs 50 with the delay, which is still less than the 3hrs 20 mins it takes by coach at that time of day. But granted the coach fares would be cheaper.



 

[gaf71]

I'm not sure what you were expecting. The rule is an hour's delay for compensation to be due and it wasn't an hour. If they had offered you something then would they offer anyone else who complained when the delay was less than an hour, and where would they draw the line?

Your journey took 2 hrs 50 with the delay, which is still less than the 3hrs 20 mins it takes by coach at that time of day. But granted the coach fares would be cheaper.



 

Exactly right. You pay your money and take your chances. Read the small print. Compensation paid for delays over an hour only, so you are really wasting everyones time claiming for a 47 minute delay. Thems the rules I'm afraid!

[G.Uard]

Check out the National Express T's & C's

http://www.nationalexpress.com/coach/OurService/conditions.cfm


Compo for delays noticeably absent.

[inspector_blakey]

In fact FGW^▸ (First Great Western) offer you significantly more compensation than is dictated by the conditions of carriage: these only mandate a 20% refund for the affected leg of a journey if it is delayed by 60 minutes or more.

Afraid I find myself agreeing with the comments posted above. A line has to be drawn somewhere and FGW are absolutely clear in their publications that this is 60 minutes delay at your destination and you will receive a full refund. Incidentally, no actual train needs to have run an hour late: if you miss an advertised connection and the next service isn't for an hour, you will be compensated because the benchmark is arriving 60 minutes late at your ultimate destination due to a delay to a FGW train caused by a rail industry fault.

[eightf48544]

Oh what a muddle were are in!

At the other end of the latenss scale an IC^▸ (Inter City) train can be ontime 10 down and a commuter train 5 down.

Perhaps a better way of doing it would be a percentage latenss on the overall journey time.

So at say at 25% a two hour overall journey would be 30 minutes and a 4 hour jouney an hour. With a max of an hour. Might lead to some brisker running! The percentage could gradually be reduced as an incentive to improve performance.

[TerminalJunkie]

Perhaps a better way of doing it would be a percentage latenss on the overall journey time.

So people travelling on a train from Reading to London would get compensation for being 20 minutes late, while other people on the same train who have travelled from Penzance wouldn't? How is that better?

[willc]

If you have the new Today's Railways Europe to hand, there is an interesting editorial about how the Swiss are trying to tackle the issue of what is a delay and how to attribute and calculate them.

[basset44]

Fair comment by you all. Just that if I had paid advance rate problary would not have cared, I had a load of advance tickets but was stuck by snow.

Interesting that in 1987 train journeys took about 1 Hour 40 Mins from london to Cardiff ( Fast Trains), it now takes 2 Hours 3 minutes suppose that is progress.

[John R]

Indeed. Non-stop from Newport to London every two hours from the start of 125s in 1976.

Of course, now we are told that all the additional stops are needed, and the trains are then crammed to get more seats in. At the start HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) had 4 x 72 seat SC  = 288 seats. Now they have 5 x 80 =400. (Probably not quite correct but a good indication of the increased capacity.) So then they have to make the extra stops, as a train running non stop from Newport would not be full enough. (It's the same story on the Bristol TM^‡(resolve) service.)

The ideal service would be six shorter trains, with four stoppers and one fast each hour to South Wales and Bristol,  providing the headline journey times that ought to exist. Unfortunately the much fanfared new trains will be longer if anything, so it would appear as though we could be stuck with the current pattern for many years to come. 



 

[devon_metro]

These "wonderful" trains run by BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) were 2+7, all trains these days are 2+8.

Not forgetting the lost direct journey opportunities to Bristol, Swindon, Reading etc.

[eightf48544]

Perhaps a better way of doing it would be a percentage latenss on the overall journey time.

So people travelling on a train from Reading to London would get compensation for being 20 minutes late, while other people on the same train who have travelled from Penzance wouldn't? How is that better?

If you have the new Today's Railways Europe to hand, there is an interesting editorial about how the Swiss are trying to tackle the issue of what is a delay and how to attribute and calculate them.

Today's Railway, that's where I must have got the idea. In fact the Swiss are trying to take into account how lateness is perceived by passengers, depending on the type of service they are travelling.Thus a late running  local train with less than 50 passengers would not be treated the same as a late running packed double decker commuter train with a 1000 passengers on board. 

They will take into account the capacity of the train and number of connections missed.

So late running from Reading in the up morning peak might be considered more serious than from Penzance, (more passengers inconvenienced ) but this would not necessarily be the same on the way home where a late arrival at Penzanace (more connections missed on route) might  be considered more serious than late arrival at Reading from Paddington.

The problem is that the Swiss manage 95% of trains within 5 minutes and nearly 90% within 3 minutes without all the padding FGW^▸ (First Great Western) needs. However, under the new system performance drops to 86%.

[vacman]

The ideal service would be six shorter trains, with four stoppers and one fast each hour to South Wales and Bristol,  providing the headline journey times that ought to exist. Unfortunately the much fanfared new trains will be longer if anything, so it would appear as though we could be stuck with the current pattern for many years to come. 



 

Didn't Virgin try something like this? the infamous "Operation princess" whic was a total f*ck up in the end!

[willc]

The problem is that the Swiss manage 95% of trains within 5 minutes and nearly 90% within 3 minutes without all the padding FGW^▸ (First Great Western) needs. However, under the new system performance drops to 86%.

But I think I'd rather have a Swiss 86% than an FGW 86%!

And it does help having near-universal electrification and gold-plated infrastructure, resulting from steady, sustained investment over many years, unlike this country.

[G.Uard]

Not running the system into the ground during 2 major wars has also helped.