duncananderson
Member
- Joined
- 9 Jan 2012
- Messages
- 24
Yesterday I had to travel from London to Frodsham after a day’s work in London. I carried out my usual ticket buying routine which is search for a ticket on National Rail website, then buy my chosen ticket from the Scotrail website, as I find this easiest to use.
The journey shown which suited me best was 19:00 from Euston to Runcorn with Avanti, arriving at Runcorn at 20:51, and changing onto 20:59 TFW service to Chester for one stop to Frodsham. I bought an off-peak single which booked me a reservation on both services. Unfortunately the Avanti service gradually lost time and arrived at Runcorn 9L, missing the connection by one minute.
Realising the connection was in danger, the train manager advised passengers for Chester to remain onboard to Liverpool and use Merseyrail, but that’s not very helpful for Frodsham, so I asked him for advice and he suggested I make myself known to platform staff at Runcorn for assistance, but I may have a two hour wait or have to get a taxi.
When I approached the platform staff at Runcorn I received what I would describe as a thorough telling off. They had asked the train manager on the London train not to let any Chester passengers disembark so why had I done so? And I shouldn’t be making that journey anyway as it wasn’t a connection. When I said that I’d managed to buy a ticket for it online with reservations so it clearly was, the response was “not from our website you didn’t”, which was of course correct, but I have always understood that that should be irrelevant.
I’ve now searched for the journey on the Avanti website, and sure enough it’s not listed. Yet other operators websites and NRE give it as an option. So my questions are:
1) Surely a ticket is valid regardless of which site it is bought from? If the system will sell a ticket for a particular itinerary, surely it should be valid, and the itinerary should exist?
2) What authority does one operator have to refuse to recognise a connection which the national timetable shows? I know NRE won’t show journeys with connections below the minimum time as I’ve occasionally made an unadvertised 3 minute connection at Clapham Jcn.
3) Did I do anything wrong to deserve the dressing down from two members of platform staff or was that just poor customer service? It definitely felt like a “we can’t be bothered to deal with your issues, please go away” message, and left a rather unpleasant feeling, especially as my journey was being made under less than ideal personal circumstances.
Obviously the platform staff can’t make the connection come back but the response I was expecting to get would have been something like: “sorry you missed your connection, these are your onward travel options, and this is how you claim delay repay if it becomes applicable”.
The journey shown which suited me best was 19:00 from Euston to Runcorn with Avanti, arriving at Runcorn at 20:51, and changing onto 20:59 TFW service to Chester for one stop to Frodsham. I bought an off-peak single which booked me a reservation on both services. Unfortunately the Avanti service gradually lost time and arrived at Runcorn 9L, missing the connection by one minute.
Realising the connection was in danger, the train manager advised passengers for Chester to remain onboard to Liverpool and use Merseyrail, but that’s not very helpful for Frodsham, so I asked him for advice and he suggested I make myself known to platform staff at Runcorn for assistance, but I may have a two hour wait or have to get a taxi.
When I approached the platform staff at Runcorn I received what I would describe as a thorough telling off. They had asked the train manager on the London train not to let any Chester passengers disembark so why had I done so? And I shouldn’t be making that journey anyway as it wasn’t a connection. When I said that I’d managed to buy a ticket for it online with reservations so it clearly was, the response was “not from our website you didn’t”, which was of course correct, but I have always understood that that should be irrelevant.
I’ve now searched for the journey on the Avanti website, and sure enough it’s not listed. Yet other operators websites and NRE give it as an option. So my questions are:
1) Surely a ticket is valid regardless of which site it is bought from? If the system will sell a ticket for a particular itinerary, surely it should be valid, and the itinerary should exist?
2) What authority does one operator have to refuse to recognise a connection which the national timetable shows? I know NRE won’t show journeys with connections below the minimum time as I’ve occasionally made an unadvertised 3 minute connection at Clapham Jcn.
3) Did I do anything wrong to deserve the dressing down from two members of platform staff or was that just poor customer service? It definitely felt like a “we can’t be bothered to deal with your issues, please go away” message, and left a rather unpleasant feeling, especially as my journey was being made under less than ideal personal circumstances.
Obviously the platform staff can’t make the connection come back but the response I was expecting to get would have been something like: “sorry you missed your connection, these are your onward travel options, and this is how you claim delay repay if it becomes applicable”.
