Did anyone get to speak to the managers at City Thameslink yesterday afternoon?
Ok, have finally bitten and decided to register to post. I commute daily between St Albans City and London. Ive been reading this forum since the week of 26th October to find out what was going on since FCC were telling us commuters nothing and so we found out for ourselves!
Anyway, City Thameslink station on Wednesday evening. I went primarily to make my complaints about two things:
1. Information to Passengers and Customer Services responses during the recent service problems
2. Compensation
As whatever is going on, and we pretty much all know by now, Customer Service Information and Compensation are two things FCC has absolute control of and neither has been good enough.
1. I showed them examples of recent email correspondence and how Customer Services had:
I. Not answered the questions I had raised
II. Copied and pasted (presumably) bits of information so you have sentences that do not make any sense
III. Provide answers that are far too generic, can be read on the companys web site (hey Im not an idiot I can read that for myself) and do not look at a passengers specific circumstances e.g. what use is telling me about ticket acceptance on London Buses and South West and Southern trains when Im trying to get from St Albans to St Pancras/Farringdon?
The responses generally follow the format that someone in another thread poked fun at
Dear xx, Very sorry about zz. Some random information that is not relevant/you knew already. Vaguely back on topic but still not answering the question. Copy and paste marketing bulls*** from company web site. Regards yy
Within the emails I was specifically asking them to explain their statement of Friday 30th October which was provided by a FCC Spokesman in response to an article the Herts Advertiser published on its web site and went something along the lines of well its half term and its sunny. This was complete rubbish, they know it, they were trying to cover up the truth and they still will not admit it properly. Things they are saying now like We have always attempted to be open and honest with customers regardless of how tough the message may be...In hindsight perhaps we should have assumed worse case scenario from the beginning
will not wash with us now and we wont be taken for fools. To be fair to the guy I spoke to on Wednesday evening, he could not believe the half term/sunshine excuse and thought it was bad.
I also made complaints, with specific examples, of the random changes to the revised timetable and lack of information not just to passengers, but to their own staff on the platforms who dont appear to know whats going on at times either (to the point I kind of feel sorry for them).
2. I made the point that the compensation system is an utter joke and does not work for commuter services. Delay Repay may work on long distance journeys where you have advance tickets booked for a specific train but not on routes where passengers can get on any train and there are so many services, a number of which have slightly different journey times due to different stopping patterns (e.g. some fast trains call at West Hampstead) and some change track and take a minute or so longer etc. and so whether Im 28/29/30/31 minutes late I have no idea and I dont want to study FCCs timetables (the proper one, the revised one and the actual arrival times of trains) every evening to work it out!!!
Even prior to the recent problems, the compensation system for season ticket holders was ridiculous, weve wasted enough time being late, we then have a form filling exercise to then receive a letter that tells us we werent 30 minutes late, when for example, there was one or more cancelled services and the next service turns up short formed so we cant get on so we end up on the next one which is delayed/slow so we are more than 30 minutes late but FCC thinks about 2000 people should have been able to get on its 4 coach service that ran and refuses the compensation claim.
The guy I was speaking to at City Thameslink eventually admitted that virtually everyone who had been to speak to them was complaining about compensation and that the system was inadequate and he thought that the Senior Management were now going to look at it. Other main complaints were all about information.
Sorry for the long post/rant, but err, you asked what went on at City T and I was talking to the guy for nearly half an hour
