I take back my praise for Greater Anglia

[F Great Eastern]

What on Earth has been going on the last few months? I haven't used them since before September and always thought they were better than National Express but my experiences over the last few days have been very frustrating to say the least.

I've been on 4 different loco hauled Class 90's with MK3 stock. Wifi has not been working on any of them, an apology was given a number of times by the people on the train, but on an intercity service this is unacceptable to be happening so often and each time I was on a different rake, so that means at least 25% of the stock out there doesn't have Wiif. The same on all of them, network shows up but no connectivity.

Many of the rakes are going around with a wonderful rainbow set of coaches, with many combinations of refurbished in blue livery, refurbished in white livery, unrefurbished in blue livery, refurbished in white livery, part refurbished in white livery with rows of seats seemingly missing, first class coaches in between standard coaches being declassified as standard, some of which are refurbished, some are not.

Then you go into the refurbished carriages and realise it's better than the one that National Express did, but not by much, new carpet, new seat covers, new luggage rack covers and new covers on the walls.but nothing radical. The lighting and aircon is better and the plug sockets are welcome, shame that they constantly keep tripping out and coming back again during a journey. I counted it happen about 10 times. Also great that they didn't put powered doors between the carriages, some of which are getting stuck and the stink from the toilet fills the entire carriage.

Then what is going on with the seat reservations? Every service I was on, off-peak I saw virtually every seat in carriages I was in with a reservation card attached, about 20% of the seats that were actually reserved were occupied and walking through to the buffet it was the same in other carriages, the amount of reservation slips for the time trains I was traveling really shocked me since I didn't possibly think the train could be that busy, alas I was proven right, but it doesn't explain why there were so many for it.

 

[cjmillsnun]

Really? WIFI? Is that your major gripe?

Was the train on time? clean? Were the staff polite?

OK the toilets are a problem. It shouldn't be on Mk3s.

Sockets may well trip if people plug in appliances that are too powerful.

 

[Paul Kelly]

the plug sockets are welcome, shame that they constantly keep tripping out and coming back again during a journey. I counted it happen about 10 times.

Isn't that just when the train goes through a neutral section, so no power is available?

 

[F Great Eastern]

The train was on time, it wasn't clean, it stank (on two of the trains I was on), at Colchester Northbound the first Coach and the front door of the second coach was infront of the down-ramp of the platform and beyond the notice that says "Passengers must not go beyond this point leading to a number of passengers confused if they should go further to board or not..

I went to Ipswich and all of the toilets were flooded and blocked in the males loos and water everywhere, the waiting room was closed and was not going to be reopened, a gentleman said he was bursting for toilet and was asked if he could use the disabled loos and was told he was not disabled and therefore he has to wait for his train which was due in half an hour.

 

[chubs]

Same, first time I travelled on them in a while last week.

Refurbished mk3 I would say was to the same standard as the original 'one' refurb but far more drab and grey, I preferred the original blue refurb with 'one', it was less depressing and brighter. The sockets and new lighting are a welcome addition though.

On the way back the vestibule doors in at least 4 carriages were broken, every time someone walked through it let a horrible draft and squeaky noise in until someone forced it shut. Despite refurb the toilets aren't any better than before. Wifi was also broken on the return. On the outbound journey the PA wasn't audible at all in the refurbed carriage.

I also noticed that at least 50% of reserved seats were unoccupied too on both legs, although not sure what GA can do to stop people doing this.

As much as some members of this forum want the mk3's to continue forever and scoff at the prospect of sockets and wifi these are things that the majority of the commuting and leisure public want and expect these days (as well as a seat before someone pedantic comes along), something really has to give in the new franchise.

 

[yorkie]

As much as some members of this forum want the mk3's to continue forever and scoff at the prospect of sockets and wifi these are things that the majority of the commuting and leisure public want and expect these days (as well as a seat before someone pedantic comes along), something really has to give in the new franchise.

Ah, I wondered how long it would take for someone to erroneously blame the Mk3s. Look at Mk3s on CrossCountry, GWR and VTEC to see what can be done.

 

[ComUtoR]

The train was on time, it wasn't clean, it stank (on two of the trains I was on),

Yeah, sorry about that, passengers use the floor as a toilet/bin.

 

[SPADTrap]

Wonders of being given half cooked franchises for silly small lengths of time.

 

[IKB]

If lack of Wifi becomes people's major gripe then it shows how far we have come.

The trains will be routinely cleaned at the end of the day at the depots, with a quick spin through for rubbish at the end of each journey.

Rubbish left lying around mid-journey or **** on the floor of the toilets doesn't belong to the conductor, the buffet staff or the driver. It belongs to the passengers.

With regards to the seat reservations, what do you expect the onboard staff to do about that, seriously? They can request on the tannoy for people to occupy their reserved seats, but that is all.

Then you go into the refurbished carriages and realise it's better than the one that National Express did, but not by much, new carpet, new seat covers, new luggage rack covers and new covers on the walls.but nothing radical. The lighting and aircon is better and the plug sockets are welcome, shame that they constantly keep tripping out and coming back again during a journey.

Like any standard train refurbishment then... Given the treatment the passengers give the carriages, why would a short lived franchise spend a gigantic amount of money on 35+ year old carriages?

 

[F Great Eastern]

Well some of the seat reservations had overlapping reservations which suggested something had gone wrong in the system or they were printing reservations for multiple services.

I saw reservation tickets with the same seat slaying "London Liverpool Street to Ipswich and also Colchester to Norwich" on them which suggests something is very much amiss. and it cannot be people not occupying their own seats because I walked through four carriages and all the carriages were like that and spotted about 3 seats without tickets in each carriage with about at best 50% of seats taken with tickets Where would those standard class passengers go? Sit in First? Not like there was lots of free unreserved seats.

 

[chubs]

My train was clean each time. Staff were polite and friendly too - although I've always found that with Anglia / One / NXEA.

On the return leg there were 'doubled up' seat reservations too, so the new ones (LST to NRW) were put in front of the old ones (the previous NRW to LST working). I found it odd but assumed it was a one off, maybe not?

 

[F Great Eastern]

Staff were fine for me too.

If they are doing that with the reservations it would make sense why there were so many tickets, since if they were doubling up it's possible some were only reserved in one direction with one ticket, so half of those tickets in theory may have been for the opposite direction.

Still doesn't explain how a single ticket can have Liverpool Street to Ipswich and Colchester to Norwich on though, what happens between Colchester and Ipswich? You sit on each others lap?

 

[86246]

As mentioned earlier, the power sockets cutting out is when the train goes through a neutral section.

I'm not sure that I understand the complaint about different liveried coaches with a mixture of refurbished coaches. As a couple of coaches are being refreshed at one time it will mean that there will be a mixture out there. The wifi has always been very much a hit and miss situation and certainly not worth paying to access.

I'm more concerned with the amount of coaches that have had electrical faults with no lighting in recent times.

 

[F Great Eastern]

It was an observation more than a complaint about the different coloured coaches.

We're nowhere near the days of ONE and NXEA when there could be 4-5 different liveries in a rake.

 

[306024]

Wonders of being given half cooked franchises for silly small lengths of time.

Yep. It is remarkable how cheerful and friendly the staff are given the number of times they've had to put up with change. Using AGA most days of the week all I'd say is there are many worse outfits.

Anyway some of the MkIIIs date from 1974, 42 years old. They really are past their sell by date but have to soldier on for three or more years yet. Of course they won't get a full refurbishment given that lifespan, and the short term franchises. They also get a fair amount of use on intensive diagrams with stop start schedules, not quite what they were originally designed for.

The only problem with seat reservations I've seen is old ones left on occasionally, nothing more. Toilets are as clean as the previous occupant left them. As for the story about someone not being able to use the disabled loo at Ipswich, if the others were unavailable, that sound barely credible, but then I wasn't there.

 

[dk1]

If you get the Pretendolino then, unlucky, you get no wifi but hey-Ho, be grateful for sockets. Then if it's not a FOD at J you get nowt any ways on any set. Should we lose the ex-Virgin set in July it will worsen still before the refurb is complete. No use wearing rose tinted specs for Anglia as that was mainly MK2s with flat batts & the like then along came 'one' which was hated beyond belief. I've been there seen that & will wait to be impressed with the new order. I ain't holding my breath.

 

[AJM580]

I think things could be worse, At least in AGA land we don't have to put up with Voyagers or Pacers. I've travelled on local trains for the best part of 35 years and think that generally AGA do a good job. Staff both on train and on the platform are friendly and willing to help. Things have moved on, thankfully the days of Cravens units with square wheels doing Norwich to Peterborough via Ely are long gone.

 

[F Great Eastern]

If you get the Pretendolino then, unlucky, you get no wifi but hey-Ho, be grateful for sockets. Then if it's not a FOD at J you get nowt any ways on any set. Should we lose the ex-Virgin set in July it will worsen still before the refurb is complete. No use wearing rose tinted specs for Anglia as that was mainly MK2s with flat batts & the like then along came 'one' which was hated beyond belief. I've been there seen that & will wait to be impressed with the new order. I ain't holding my breath.

I wasn't on the Pretendolino, just refurbished and unfurnished GA stock. I don't like the Voyagers either, and don't get me started on Pacers.

I agree that AGA are doing a better job than NX but to be fair that's not exactly setting the bar high. I was no huge fan of Anglia either, they had an excellent marketing department though that enabled them to paint a very rosy picture at all times.

 

[dk1]

I wasn't on the Pretendolino, just refurbished and unfurnished GA stock. I don't like the Voyagers either, and don't get me started on Pacers.

I agree that AGA are doing a better job than NX but to be fair that's not exactly setting the bar high. I was no huge fan of Anglia either, they had an excellent marketing department though that enabled them to paint a very rosy picture at all times.

Sounds like we are on the same page. Can't see any sort of improvement on the horizon. Will be more hopes & dreams for a few years yet I suspect.

 

[grumblingalong]

As for the story about someone not being able to use the disabled loo at Ipswich, if the others were unavailable, that sound barely credible, but then I wasn't there.

I too find this a tad hard to believe as I have seen many times the station staff at Ipswich give out the disabled loo key/leave it unlocked when the ladies or gents were out of use.

Besides why were they out of use? Blocked? Well AGA didn't block them! If it's the day I'm thinking of the issues were sorted within a few hours.

 

[F Great Eastern]

I didn't ask myself, I just heard someone talking about it. Of course some passenger has probably been inconsiderate and blocked them themselves, but still. I don't know how work in Ipswich is going right now, but it was last week and with the ongoing changes to the station and the portacabin outside maybe that had something to do withit.

 

[grumblingalong]

I didn't go in the toilets, I just heard someone talking about it. Of course some passenger has probably been inconsiderate and blocked them themselves, but still. I don't know how work in Ipswich is going right now, but it was last week and with the ongoing changes to the station and the portacabin outside maybe that had something to do withit.

Toilets haven't/won't be touched as they were redone not so long ago. As far as I'm aware work on the rest of the station is going well, they'll have it all AGA liveried up ready for the next TOC to change come October

 

[bb21]

Stinky toilets and drafty doors, fair enough. Isn't WiFi still in trial mode? What should GA do if WiFi fails in a coach? Take the train out of service? If it is so vitally important then get a data plan. Hardly breaking the bank these days.

Neutral sections cutting out plug powers, train livery, and reservations? Jeez! Big deal! Should GA take coaches out of service just to repaint them all in one go? Were the reservations resulting in people having to sit on each other's laps?

 

[F Great Eastern]

Stinky toilets and drafty doors, fair enough. Isn't WiFi still in trial mode? What should GA do if WiFi fails in a coach? Take the train out of service? If it is so vitally important then get a data plan. Hardly breaking the bank these days.

Well it's been on trains for a few years and I was travelling on business and my business contract for my phone forbids me to use my mobile for tethering so what do you expect I do? I don't mind it happening on the odd occasion but four different rakes in a few days and every single one of them didn't have working Wifi.

I don't expect them to take the coaches out of service but I expect them to provide a service they advertise. The odd train without Wifi I can understand, but I've been on four different rakes out of a total of 15 in the fleet, and none of them worked and that is just the ones I was on. I'd say it was highly likely other rakes were effected as well since if 4 out of 4 were faulty it's unlikely the other 11 are working by the chance of probability.

Lets say just 3 of them were not working out of the remaining 11. That's still half the fleet on a weekday For an intercity service, that is not acceptable and anyone with proper attention to detail to provide a proper service should make sure the availability is far higher than that and if it's down to external contractors, get them to actually provide far better uptime.

Neutral sections cutting out plug powers, train livery, and reservations? Jeez! Big deal! Should GA take coaches out of service just to repaint them all in one go? Were the reservations resulting in people having to sit on each other's laps?

It wasn't just in neutral sections because it was happening when the trains were standing still at stations as well.

As for the reservations, well there were no advance tickets available on one of the services I booked, I had to pay a walk up single off-peak which was very strange and then with the amount of reserved seats that were not occupied which were almost certainly from advance tickets, it is very strange especially when some seats appeared to have been double sold and very little of the booked seats were actually taken and the excuse that the passengers sat in other seats doesn't hold up, because there were so few seats that were not reserved, which were heavily outweighed by a large number by those which were vacant.

 

[Hadders]

I've been out and abut in AGA land today. I've been through Cambridge, Norwich, Lowestoft, Ipswich, Harwich, Walton on the Naze, Clacton and Sudbury.

All my trains were bang on time except the one between Clacton and Marks Tey (which was 4 minutes late due to the guard selling a ticket to a chav as he was alighting from the front set of doors). Thankfully the connection to Sudbury was held.

Trains were clean, toilets in working order except one on a 360 which was blocked. Trains wre not massively busy although the train between Lowestoft and Ipswich started off practically empty but was very full upon arrival at Ipswich.

Staff were excellent although I was unable to get the return portion of my 'via Cambridge' ticket excessed to '+Any Permitted'. Tried at a couple of stations but their ticketing systems wouldn't play ball. Guard was unable to do it either.

I did notice posters at stations saying Wi-fi was undergoing maintenance to improve it and it might be a bit intermittent over the next couple of weeks. Not sure if it applied to wi-fi at stations, on-board or both as I didn't stop to read the,.

Overall not a lote to complain about really.

 

[bb21]

Well it's been on trains for a few years and I was travelling on business and my business contract for my phone forbids me to use my mobile for tethering so what do you expect I do? I don't mind it happening on the odd occasion but four different rakes in a few days and every single one of them didn't have working Wifi.

Get a personal phone with a data plan? Don't do your work on the train? If it were so vital that you do your work then get your company to cough up for tethering? Plenty of options.

You will never find it 100% reliable with on-train WiFi due to various factors. Sometimes it is just luck that you may find a few trains in a row that don't have them. If you were proactive then you don't have to rely on those things when you find yourself on one that were broke. Were you on them all on the same day? How do you know it wasn't a case of one being fixed and another one broken soon after? How do you know it is not sometimes a case of some idiots taking up all the bandwidth making even connection ridiculously difficult? You are making a lot of assumptions in your analysis of availability.
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It wasn't just in neutral sections because it was happening when the trains were standing still at stations as well.

Faulty sockets? Did you report this to GA? If you tell them which ones are having problems then they can have a closer look.

As for the reservations, well there were no advance tickets available on one of the services I booked, I had to pay a walk up single off-peak which was very strange and then with the amount of reserved seats that were not occupied which were almost certainly from advance tickets, it is very strange especially when some seats appeared to have been double sold and very little of the booked seats were actually taken and the excuse that the passengers sat in other seats doesn't hold up, because there were so few seats that were not reserved, which were heavily outweighed by a large number by those which were vacant.

I am intrigued how you can tell whether a seat reservation were for an Advance fare or a walk-on fare. It is not unusual for the majority of a train to be reserved with walk-on fares. It is also not unusual for large bookings to be re-reserved onto a different train and the originals not cancelled.

The double-booking issue is a mystery. I have heard it happening before (usually due to a technical fault with one reservation erroneously wiped in the system) but never with both being printed on the same coupon. Perhaps you can take a picture next time this happens, and send it to GA or upload it here (due to the number of industry people reading this forum).

I still think these are minor issues not really worthy of getting annoyed about.

 

[DarloRich]

What on Earth has been going on the last few months? I haven't used them since before September and always thought they were better than National Express but my experiences over the last few days have been very frustrating to say the least.

I've been on 4 different loco hauled Class 90's with MK3 stock. Wifi has not been working on any of them, an apology was given a number of times by the people on the train, but on an intercity service this is unacceptable to be happening so often and each time I was on a different rake, so that means at least 25% of the stock out there doesn't have Wiif. The same on all of them, network shows up but no connectivity.

Many of the rakes are going around with a wonderful rainbow set of coaches, with many combinations of refurbished in blue livery, refurbished in white livery, unrefurbished in blue livery, refurbished in white livery, part refurbished in white livery with rows of seats seemingly missing, first class coaches in between standard coaches being declassified as standard, some of which are refurbished, some are not.

Then you go into the refurbished carriages and realise it's better than the one that National Express did, but not by much, new carpet, new seat covers, new luggage rack covers and new covers on the walls.but nothing radical. The lighting and aircon is better and the plug sockets are welcome, shame that they constantly keep tripping out and coming back again during a journey. I counted it happen about 10 times. Also great that they didn't put powered doors between the carriages, some of which are getting stuck and the stink from the toilet fills the entire carriage.

Then what is going on with the seat reservations? Every service I was on, off-peak I saw virtually every seat in carriages I was in with a reservation card attached, about 20% of the seats that were actually reserved were occupied and walking through to the buffet it was the same in other carriages, the amount of reservation slips for the time trains I was traveling really shocked me since I didn't possibly think the train could be that busy, alas I was proven right, but it doesn't explain why there were so many for it.

WOW - first world issues right there!

Wifi? not having the same paint work and carpet? It must be a decent service if that is all there is to complain about! :roll:

 

[Bletchleyite]

WOW - first world issues right there!



Wifi? not having the same paint work and carpet? It must be a decent service if that is all there is to complain about! :roll:

I agree about the colour scheme, but if you advertise a service it should be properly provided on all but a very few unavoidable occasions. Thus if wifi is advertised it should be provided, or the advertising should cease.

 

[DarloRich]

I agree about the colour scheme, but if you advertise a service it should be properly provided on all but a very few unavoidable occasions. Thus if wifi is advertised it should be provided, or the advertising should cease.

Agreed Although it isn't really the end of the world is it? How many LM trains into Euston have wifi? How many Northern trains? It doesn't seem to retard passenger numbers that much!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Agreed Although it isn't really the end of the world is it? How many LM trains into Euston have wifi? How many Northern trains? It doesn't seem to retard passenger numbers that much!

It is about providing what you advertise on which basis people make purchasing decisions, not about whether it is in the offering. If it is not advertised people will make other arrangements. If it is advertised people will make purchasing decisions based on it, so advertising it knowing it is not universally provided (or near so) is fraudulent.