Do Thameslink Ever get ANYTHING Right ? [RA - rant alert]

[Mutant Lemming]

After a frustrating week of delays and cancellations over last week (causing me to be late for a funeral, missed connections and having to seek alternative routes on other days) on a day when their trains ARE running on time I gave up attempting to travel with them after waiting over 30 minutes to buy a ticket while the booking clerk was dealing with an issue over someone's machine oystercard payment.
They are quick enough to stamp on people without tickets the least they should do is ensure people who need to buy tickets can do so within a reasonable timespan.

 

[Skimble19]

After a frustrating week of delays and cancellations over last week (causing me to be late for a funeral, missed connections and having to seek alternative routes on other days) on a day when their trains ARE running on time I gave up attempting to travel with them after waiting over 30 minutes to buy a ticket while the booking clerk was dealing with an issue over someone's machine oystercard payment.
They are quick enough to stamp on people without tickets the least they should do is ensure people who need to buy tickets can do so within a reasonable timespan.

I have to ask, what ticket were you trying to buy? Did the station you were at not have any working ticket machines? If you were just travelling for the day I find it unlikely you couldn't have done it on a TVM..

 

[3141]

Obviously they DO get things right, since you've said the trains were running on time.

It seems a bit extreme to blame the whole organisation for what may have been a misjudgement by a ticket clerk in spending so much time on one customer's problem that others experienced difficulties.

 

[PHILIPE]

Obviously they DO get things right, since you've said the trains were running on time.

It seems a bit extreme to blame the whole organisation for what may have been a misjudgement by a ticket clerk in spending so much time on one customer's problem that others experienced difficulties.

The ticket clerk couldn't really tell the customer to sling their hook.

 

[3141]

The ticket clerk couldn't really tell the customer to sling their hook.

Difficult, isn't it. I suppose if you saw a lengthening queue while dealing with one customer's problem you'd feel you should get on with selling them the tickets they wanted, but it might be hard to tell the first one to stand aside.

 

[Robertj21a]

After a frustrating week of delays and cancellations over last week (causing me to be late for a funeral, missed connections and having to seek alternative routes on other days) on a day when their trains ARE running on time I gave up attempting to travel with them after waiting over 30 minutes to buy a ticket while the booking clerk was dealing with an issue over someone's machine oystercard payment.
They are quick enough to stamp on people without tickets the least they should do is ensure people who need to buy tickets can do so within a reasonable timespan.

Does this only ever happen on Thameslink ?

 

[Ianno87]

The ticket clerk couldn't really tell the customer to sling their hook.

Quite a few years back, the guy in the office at New Beckenham resolved such a scenario by shouting at the customer for holding up the queue and causing everyone behind to miss their train (even though it was him who had initially issued the wrong ticket).

On another occasion, the same guy tried to convince me that Shoeburyness didn't exist...

 

[Mutant Lemming]

I have to ask, what ticket were you trying to buy? Did the station you were at not have any working ticket machines? If you were just travelling for the day I find it unlikely you couldn't have done it on a TVM..

yes it is a rant - but it was the final straw in a week when I had to rely on Thameslink for three days and was let down by them on every single occasion.

As for this final straw there were 15 other people also waiting - there are plenty of tickets that people require that cannot be purchased from a TVM.

The man in the ticket office chose to sort out an ongoing issue with a customer's oysercard which took him at least 35 minutes (probably a lot longer as we gave up in the end).
He could have
(i - put the dispute to one side while he served people waiting on trains

(ii - opened the gates and allowed people to pay at the nearest available point

Despite protestations from some in the queue he kept people waiting beyond missing two trains on a half hour headway - this cost many over an hour of their time. There was a second member of staff present who's soul purpose is to watch the gateline.

The simple answer would be to train up the second person in attendance to issue tickets should this situation arise.

Making life easy for it's long suffering passengers has never been the Thameslink way though.

 

[Skimble19]

yes it is a rant - but it was the final straw in a week when I had to rely on Thameslink for three days and was let down by them on every single occasion.

As for this final straw there were 15 other people also waiting - there are plenty of tickets that people require that cannot be purchased from a TVM.

The man in the ticket office chose to sort out an ongoing issue with a customer's oysercard which took him at least 35 minutes (probably a lot longer as we gave up in the end).
He could have
(i - put the dispute to one side while he served people waiting on trains

(ii - opened the gates and allowed people to pay at the nearest available point

Despite protestations from some in the queue he kept people waiting beyond missing two trains on a half hour headway - this cost many over an hour of their time. There was a second member of staff present who's soul purpose is to watch the gateline.

The simple answer would be to train up the second person in attendance to issue tickets should this situation arise.

Making life easy for it's long suffering passengers has never been the Thameslink way though.

You appear to have missed my question.. just what ticket were you trying to purchase? I appreciate that you're ranting but without giving many details it's not going to get you any answers..

It does appear it would have been sensible for him to have done a bit of queue busting in between trying to sort the Oyster issue, but in my experience passengers often don't help themselves either by insisting on queuing to buy something that is often as simple as a Travelcard and then complaining about missing trains, despite a row of perfectly usable ticket machines sitting unused.. not suggesting you did this but it's hard to know with the few details you've given.

Depending on what station you were at the gate line staff may have just been agency who are trained to operate the gates and that's it - actual GTR staff (certainly on GN and I believe TL) would have been able to sell most tickets to you.

 

[jon0844]

At St Pancras, I've been in the queue behind people who are doing some pretty complex things. They're tourists that have been told to get a railcard before booking a journey on EMT or VTEC (they don't all go over to King's Cross for those because the ticket offices say UK Rail after all). With the language barrier and the time to fill in paperwork - sometimes with people not understanding the request to move aside and come back - and it's a bit of a nightmare if you can't get your ticket from a TVM.

But a few weeks back, even with all the new TVMs, there were queues of around 15-20 people PER machine. I've never seen anything like this before. So many people like you wouldn't believe. We must be talking 150+ people in queues for tickets overall. HOW?!! It was insane and really hard to walk about as you were criss crossing through queues.

At that point, queue busting isn't going to help a great deal.. and that's assuming other staff are equipped to sell tickets. I'd say at some point, they could consider something else like handing out some sort of permission to travel slips, with the time/date/origin on them, and letting people sort themselves out on the train or destination?

 

[trickyvegas]

Out of interest, could a delay/repay claim be made in these circumstances as the TOC have clearly failed in terms of waiting time to buy a ticket?

 

[Wombat]

Out of interest, could a delay/repay claim be made in these circumstances as the TOC have clearly failed in terms of waiting time to buy a ticket?

Is there a target waiting time? Had to queue for 15 minutes this evening for my weekly season ticket. I realise that's not the end of the world, but it's a bit annoying after sitting on an overcrowded train without aircon after missing the preceding train cos its number of carriages has been halved, particularly when the practice of buying little pieces of paper seems a bit silly this far into the 21st century.

 

[bb21]

Out of interest, could a delay/repay claim be made in these circumstances as the TOC have clearly failed in terms of waiting time to buy a ticket?

Not that I know of, but if queue times were excessive, you can submit a complaint.

 

[dlj83]

Thameslink related but different to this man's query:

What is the policy on the new Class 700 trains on the Sutton Loop about first class.

Yesterday I boarded at St Pancras and sat in first class (as it said 1st class was declassified) however at Farringdon an RPI got on and told all 6 of us that if we didn't leave immediately we would need to pay a penalty fare.

It was my understanding (At least on the 319's on the Sutton Loop) that even if there was a first class section you could sit anywhere, has this changed with the new trains on this line?

 

[al78]

Unfortunately it is quite common in the flaky UK to have inadequate numbers of staff on duty. It is like going for a pub lunch on Sunday, and waiting over an hour for food, or the post office in my local town which used to have a queue out of the door and two out of eight windows manned, or the supermarket checkout which has a long queue for the tills and only three of them open.

 

[yorkie]

GTR are notorious for being the worst train operating company in Britain; here is their Passengers Charter (which they constantly flout):

https://www.thameslinkrailway.com/about-us/our-commitments/passengers-charter

It includes:

Please leave enough time to buy your ticket

I suggest you ask them how long you need to allow, so that you can calculate how early you need to arrive before your train is due to depart. I suspect they will refuse to answer, though.

you shouldn't have to wait for more than three minutes before being served, and no more than five minutes during busy peak periods

If they are regularly breaching this, make sure you write a complaint and ask what they are doing about it.

If excessive queuing times persist, write to the DfT stating that GTR are flouting their franchise commitments and providing detail in the form of evidence of occasions when queuing times were excessive.

The DfT should stipulate that if queuing times are greater than, say, 10 minutes or so, customers should be entitled to purchase on board. I suspect rogue train companies like GTR would suddenly start complying then!

 

[313103]

Unfortunately it is quite common in the flaky UK to have inadequate numbers of staff on duty. It is like going for a pub lunch on Sunday, and waiting over an hour for food, or the post office in my local town which used to have a queue out of the door and two out of eight windows manned, or the supermarket checkout which has a long queue for the tills and only three of them open.

And therein lies the problem, not enough staff and why ? simply because the company do not want to pay for additional staff that would solve these problems. So Cost is the real problem.

You are quite right in stating it is a very common thing in the UK, you see it everywhere and it doesn't matter the business either.

 

[313103]

You appear to have missed my question.. just what ticket were you trying to purchase? I appreciate that you're ranting but without giving many details it's not going to get you any answers..

Seems that your not going to an answer any time soon, so we have to either assume that the ticket machines were not working, that the ticket machines were working but the OP's own ticket query was complicated and couldn't be done by the machine, that all the other passengers had like the one in front of the OP complicated ticketing arrangements that they couldn't do by the machine, or that the machines were working but nobody wanted to actually use them.

 

[Mutant Lemming]

Seems that your not going to an answer any time soon, so we have to either assume that the ticket machines were not working, that the ticket machines were working but the OP's own ticket query was complicated and couldn't be done by the machine, that all the other passengers had like the one in front of the OP complicated ticketing arrangements that they couldn't do by the machine, or that the machines were working but nobody wanted to actually use them.

I have already stated that the ticket I required is not available from the ticket machines. Ticket machines do not sell every available discounted ticket. Also, the oystercard issue that caused the problem was related to the machine not loading credit on to a card while debiting the person's credit card.

 

[hounddog]

I have already stated that the ticket I required is not available from the ticket machines. Ticket machines do not sell every available discounted ticket. Also, the oystercard issue that caused the problem was related to the machine not loading credit on to a card while debiting the person's credit card.

Point of order: you said

there are plenty of tickets that people require that cannot be purchased from a TVM.

You didn't say yours was one of them.