New Virgin East Coast Website

[westv]

SaveECRewards is my hero.

 

[coxy]

As I understand it, you look in "Buy e-vouchers" not only to buy new ones but to see ones you have already bought and to add new ones to your account.

I did manage to buy and redeem an e-voucher on the new site when it was still the beta version.

Sadly I'm still unable to locate my eVouchers that were purchased via the "original" site. There's simply no record of them ever having existed !

Same thing for my previous bookings - nothing there :cry:

Think I shall be taking my business elsewhere - quite like the look of the Chiltern booking site, has that good old familiar feel about it.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Sadly I'm still unable to locate my eVouchers that were purchased via the "original" site. There's simply no record of them ever having existed !

Same thing for my previous bookings - nothing there :cry:

Think I shall be taking my business elsewhere - quite like the look of the Chiltern booking site, has that good old familiar feel about it.

Have you replied to the verification email?

 

[SaveECRewards]

While I love the spoof site (especially Access and Switch - we old fogies still refer to our Mastercards as Access usually ), are you sure it's legal? Wouldn't want you to get sued or anything.

I'd hope anyone would agree it was an obvious parody, imagine claiming in court that this site could cause confusion to their customers

I think some legal disclaimer and link to the correct site should probably be added though. I'll do that when I have time later today.

 

[YorkC]

Just to add to our mirth at the expense of VTEC here, bearing in mind that I've been booking through this site for years.

Today I went to a VTEC TVM, and typed in the code given to me on the confirmation email, I'd noted it in the usual way.

You can imagine my confusion when the first character - a '1' - was greyed out on the touchscreen keyboard.

Luckily I knew what I was doing, so immediately found the email again on my phone and sorted it out.

I'm laughing, but someone less savvy could've missed their train because of this - why do we need to know this extra idiot reference number that does nothing?

If they do one thing with this wretched site, can they put the collection reference back in the subject line of the confirmation email?

The last thing there - not putting the collection reference in the subject line - is the most stupid part of it for me. I used to star the email so even if I couldn't view the whole thing on my mobile if out of signal, I could still see the subject line. Not any more.

Those new TVMs are a nightmare in general too. Great that they now let you book from another station etc but it's very badly implemented.

 

[SaveECRewards]

The last thing there - not putting the collection reference in the subject line - is the most stupid part of it for me. I used to star the email so even if I couldn't view the whole thing on my mobile if out of signal, I could still see the subject line. Not any more.

Those new TVMs are a nightmare in general too. Great that they now let you book from another station etc but it's very badly implemented.

I use the collection reference in the subject line too. Just had a look through my booking history, this feature wasn't in WebTIS to begin with, it appeared around the middle of October 2011! It appears that was also the time the calendar attachments were added.

It could be possible then that some WebTIS installations don't offer this facility. I know GWR does.

So for this feature VTEC are taking us back to 2011, which is fine, we had EC Rewards then

 

[CaptainHaddock]

I'm travelling to London on VTEC tomorrow but need to reprint my booking confirmation as the reservation tickets did not show any reservation details. I log into the new site and go to "my booking"s and find it listed under "past bookings" but there's no way of showing the reservation details as it's listed as a past booking (even though travel is in the future!).

The only booking I can view details of is one I made through the new site for a journey I've already made, though even this is impossible as clicking on "view/edit" gives me a server error.

So on VTEC's site I can view and edit a booking for a journey I've already made yet I can't even view the details of one I have yet to make!

 

[91109]

I'm travelling to London on VTEC tomorrow but need to reprint my booking confirmation as the reservation tickets did not show any reservation details. I log into the new site and go to "my booking"s and find it listed under "past bookings" but there's no way of showing the reservation details as it's listed as a past booking (even though travel is in the future!).

The only booking I can view details of is one I made through the new site for a journey I've already made, though even this is impossible as clicking on "view/edit" gives me a server error.

So on VTEC's site I can view and edit a booking for a journey I've already made yet I can't even view the details of one I have yet to make!

Yep. Completely backwards. It's still kicking off on Twitter and the phone lines are still jammed with people wanting to amend tickets, even though we have no facility to do this over the phone, despite the website telling customers to call us.

 

[ainsworth74]

Yep. Completely backwards. It's still kicking off on Twitter and the phone lines are still jammed with people wanting to amend tickets, even though we have no facility to do this over the phone, despite the website telling customers to call us.

Wait so people are sitting on hold for upwards of 30-45 minutes only to be told that they can't be helped anyway despite the website telling them to call?!

And still VTEC will persist, no doubt, about how brilliant this whole roll out has been whilst poor staff and passengers get to suffer :roll:

 

[91109]

Wait so people are sitting on hold for upwards of 30-45 minutes only to be told that they can't be helped anyway despite the website telling them to call?!

And still VTEC will persist, no doubt, about how brilliant this whole roll out has been whilst poor staff and passengers get to suffer :roll:

Pretty much. Refund and rebook is all we can offer them.

 

[westv]

If VTEC hadn't lied about previous bookings being "safe" then maybe some of this could have been avoided.

 

[Joe Paxton]

Pretty much. Refund and rebook is all we can offer them.

That achieves the same result though - i.e. the ticket gets changed.

 

[91109]

That achieves the same result though - i.e. the ticket gets changed.

True, but the tickets can sometimes be more expensive than what was purchased.

 

[Joe Paxton]

True, but the tickets can sometimes be more expensive than what was purchased.

That's always possible when changing Advance tickets, no?

In terms of Anytime and Off-Peak tickets, then I think they'd have to have been purchased before a fares change in May?

 

[infobleep]

I got a marketing e-mail yesterday from Virgin East Coast Trains. There was an image which read:

Looking good.
Booking Smooth.

I'm sure someone could spoof that to the reality. It went on to say:

Goodbye old site. Hello better booking.
Our new website’s here and it’s pretty slick – even if we do say so ourselves. Simply create a new account, using the same email address as your previous one (it’ll only take a second) and you’ll see just how easy and quick it is to bag the best fares next time you book.

I think I'll give it a miss until I really need to book through them. If they think there Web Site is actually slick then they clearly don't know much about Web Design and user functionality. I'll admit I've not tried out the new site but I've read enough here to put me off even trying until I really have to.

 

[dave87016]

I've browsed it but its not for me I won't be using VTEC website anymore

 

[91109]

The website is a success according to the person in charge of it. Would love to know what they think failure is.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

I suggest the only silver lining is that VTEC will have to run an awful lot of "Hot Cakes" promos in the future to win back all the customers their disastrous new booking site has cost them!

 

[Deerfold]

The website is a success according to the person in charge of it. Would love to know what they think failure is.

Presumably because they're just ignoring tweets asking if previous functionality is to be restored.

 

[westv]

I suggest the only silver lining is that VTEC will have to run an awful lot of "Hot Cakes" promos in the future to win back all the customers their disastrous new booking site has cost them!

The "Hot Cakes" offers have been of no use to me and neither have any of their recent seat sales.

 

[Wallsendmag]

True, but the tickets can sometimes be more expensive than what was purchased.

Happens quite often nothing unusual there.

 

[trainophile]

I've spent over £100 on TPE website since the launch of the new VTEC site. If that is multiplied by a decent proportion of previously loyal users they must notice a difference soon. Whether they care is another matter :roll: .

 

[SaveECRewards]

The website is a success according to the person in charge of it. Would love to know what they think failure is.

Are you referring to the tweets to me?

kristalsmile‏ @kristalsmile Aug 9

Replying to @SaveECRewards @EricM_CW @Virgin_TrainsEC
As I've said before - thank you for your opinions on this, more features will become available and the launch was well planned

There was a whole bunch of posts by the head of revenue optimisation trying to explain Agile development to me, but he deleted those.

When I ask the simple question - are they trying to phase out catering vouchers by making them difficult to purchase - I never get an answer!

Someone DM'd me a summary of a conversation he overheard from a couple of VTEC managers in the EDB lounge about 30 minutes ago. I think they have their head in the sand.

They said there's three types of people: those totally engaged in the Virgin brand, those who are still a bit sceptical and those who have a hatred against anything Virgin.

If I'd been there I would have interrupted and said that's complete nonsense. I had many fears about Virgin taking over (based on west coast not being as good as east coast, and cancelling the rewards scheme) but I was mostly positive about VTEC for their first two years. But since the shift rosters on board it just seems like 2017 is the year of bad decision. I judge VTEC on their merits and think of the franchise as East Coast first and Virgin second.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Agile development is all very well but is no excuse for deploying garbage.

 

[SaveECRewards]

Agile development is all very well but is no excuse for deploying garbage.

In my experience Agile is blamed for a lot of things, it's also used in some projects in name only!

He said that they were building a minimum viable product (MVP) and then building on it. Now that's fine if you're releasing this as the beta and still leaving the full featured site accessible, but I'd say this new site doesn't meet the requirements of MVP:
- It doesn't sell all the tickets (carnets, super off peak single), some can be bought elsewhere, but the online only super off-peak single is not available anywhere else.
- It's not possible to change tickets that are meant to be changeable and refundable for a fee
- I'd also say cycle reservations should be a minimum requirement these days but that's debatable considering many sites still don't offer it.

On the other hand they added features that were definitely not needed in an MVP:
- Nectar and Flying Club (not getting points doesn't impact the ability to book tickets)
- the My Open Cases support tracker that doesn't seem to work
- The annoying 'be more Virgin' popups if you dare to select a competitor (I'd actually be for these if they weren't implemented in an irritating way where you have to click a red button with a backwards pointing arrow to proceed with your choices)
- Trying to sell overpriced London travelcards rather than providing a link explaining Oyster and Contactless on TfL.

 

[westv]

The website is a success according to the person in charge of it. Would love to know what they think failure is.

Perhaps they define success as it not crashing?!

 

[SaveECRewards]

Perhaps they define success as it not crashing?!

Based on the feedback of the app (Travel Buddy) they couldn't even manage that!

BTW will be doing another update of "Virgin Train's East Coast" over the weekend, so any feature requests welcome.

Like VTEC I reserve the right to not bother implementing them if too difficult

 

[westv]

Based on the feedback of the app (Travel Buddy) they couldn't even manage that!

BTW will be doing another update of "Virgin Train's East Coast" over the weekend, so any feature requests welcome.

Like VTEC I reserve the right to not bother implementing them if too difficult

Can we have option to chose services with no trolley in standard or hot food in 1st please. Both are such an inconvenience.

 

[91109]

David Horne had his eyes opened today. Sat and listened into some calls with one of my colleagues earlier today. There's changes being made to the IVR this weekend which will give customers a heads up. There's some other stuff coming too, but I don't know the details yet.

 

[47271]

Someone DM'd me a summary of a conversation he overheard from a couple of VTEC managers in the EDB lounge about 30 minutes ago. I think they have their head in the sand.

They said there's three types of people: those totally engaged in the Virgin brand, those who are still a bit sceptical and those who have a hatred against anything Virgin.

Hilarious. You, me and just about everyone else couldn't care less about Virgin. I'll go further than that: I'm not fussed about them any more than I am about Abellio, Arriva or First. They all run trains that I pay a lot of money to travel on, end of. Obviously I'm not going to mention Stagecoach in the context of this thread...

Anyway, my message for VTEC execs: provide a satisfactory all round service that meets reasonable expectations for the price paid, whether it's at the time of booking or when you give me dinner in First Class.

And cut out the Virgin speak please, they got away with it on the West Coast for years, but it rings very very hollow for what you're delivering on your route right now.