It depends where you are, I was on a train that came from Scotland where I got on at Birmingham New Street to London three times and I've even had a train manager make a call and say she didn't get through the whole train, go into her office which I was sitting next to since it was the only seat free since someone was sitting in my own seats that I reserved, and heard her phone her kids for the last ten minutes rather than check peoples tickets.
That's before you take into account the train managers who don't seem bothered about kicking people out of seats they shouldn't be in. I booked a table seat to work, a woman has bags on one seat, and sits on the other which is mine and refuses to move and tells me to use the non table seat which is not possible because she needs more room for her bags. Virgin Trains staff member: "We're not paid to get involved in conflicts like this, there is a spare seat, take it." twice I had something like that happen.
Every time I have gone through Kings Cross I have never seen the barriers closed recently the same at Birmingham Airport and also many other stations, booking the quiet carriage is useless since it's never enforced and guards are happy to go past and let kids scream and even start saying hello to the kids, but not kicking them out of a quiet carriage, no doubt because that they again want to avoid conflict and not start an argument.
The problem isn't the car length. It's the incessant un-necessary chatter and guff about having to use the words "Virgin 9 Car Pendolino" or "Virgin Super Voyager" and what seems to be a ban on their staff just calling it a "Virgin Trains" or "Formed of 9 Coaches" one staff member berating another because they say that is quite frankly silly and portrays the company as arrogant, there is no need for it, when people go on about pointless announcements, these are them. What made me laugh the most is the staff are happy to berate each other for not using correct terminology, but the same staff members couldn't be any less helpful about dealing with unruly passengers in a quiet carriage or passengers who are denied the seat they booked.
The majority of the ticket machines at most of their stations are poor - I was at Birmingham Airport a few months back and it was funny to see the number of tourists who were unable to use the card machines because their cards were rejected, according to the staff member as a security measure. I mean who'd have thought it? Foreigners might want to buy tickets at an airport station, best block that, because obviously that is going to be fraud.
The East Coast staff though may well not be a Virgin problem, I found a lot of issues with them when they were ran by DOR as well, the strange thing is though in all my years of travel, the only staff I've had a problem with is on the East Coast (DOR and VTEC) and the West Coast (VTWC), the rest of the staff have done an amazing job through the years on what must be thousands of trips.
