Before privatisation BR▸ issued refreshment vouchers to passengers delayed by one hour or over due to the railway's fault. It is now two hours, "to bring us in line with the airlines".
Would you be able to give a source for that quotation, since it's factually incorrect?
From
FGW▸ 's passenger's charter:
5.7 If Things Go Wrong
[snip]
We will also offer complimentary non^alcoholic drinks on our high speed services when these services are running over an hour late (while stocks last). Where possible, our on-board staff will inform you if compensation is available and provide you with one of our Compensation Claim forms. We will ensure that all our trains have sufficient copies of these forms available when required.
Edited to add...
There is no reasonable comparison that can be made between train and plane.
I'm sorry...? There was I thinking that I use both trains and planes to travel around, but I must have been mistaken. There are plenty of reasonable comparisons between trains and planes, as well as between stations and airports. Once you're through security at an airport then trust me, you will get royally screwed since you can't physically leave the secure area other than on your plane. At least at a station if you're (a) that desparately thirsty and (b) care enough about saving 80p you have the option to leave the premises and seek out one of these mythical small independent city centre cafes that hardly exist anymore where you can get a full English breakfast including bottomless tea for 3/6.
From my point of view what it comes down to is this: given the choice of spending time dragging my luggage around on a potentially fruitless search for an alternative tea vendor in the hope that I might save considerably less than a pound, or simply buying it at the station and being able to spend my time sitting down and relaxing a bit, I'll go for the latter option every single time. It is indeed all about convenience, and yes market forces dictate that you will end up paying a little more for that convenience. Of course it would be nice if you could buy a cup of tea that was both cheap and convenient. But that's not how the world works.
I really don't have much patience for the sense of entitlement that people seem to have, with the subtext "I want everything exactly so it suits me and doesn't cost me any money". It's rather like the attitude whereby people complain about how extortionate train fares are because it will cost them a realistic price to travel from Cornwall to the far North of Scotland, rather than the GBP 20.00 they seem to think they're entitled to pay.
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