Northern Rail 'Customer Service' auto-reply.

[hairyhandedfool]

OK. Thanks. Chorley to York, via Manchester, using only Northern Rail, weekday.

Depends exactly when you want to travel but as a couple of examples.....

Chorley dep 1305 (Huddersfield)
Manchester Victoria arr 1349 dep 1416 (Leeds)
Leeds arr 1543 dep 1625 (York)
York arr 1701

or

Chorley dep 1337 (Hazel Grove)
Salford Crescent arr 1408 dep 1413 (Stalybridge)
Manchester Victoria arr 1419 dep 1448 (Leeds)
Hebden Bridge arr 1519 dep 1533 (York)
York arr 1701

[You could go via Preston in less time]

 

[TUC]

I am not blowing my trumpet here but if you had asked this question here, you would probably have got a better response.

I am just curious about your choice of communication method. For a query of this nature, I would have thought that time would be of essence, so why you chose emails is beyond me. You could have rung them, spoken to a person face-to-face, or as I mentioned earlier, used social media for a speedy response. Emails offer no guarantee of a fast response and for a time-critical enquiry, is not particularly suitable imo.

What are people's experiences of ringing TOCs (as opposed to NRE) with queries beyond the simple 'what time is there a train to x'? I tend to work on the assumption that I'll just get through to a call centre who won't know anything beyond the type of information anyone could get from the NRE website or similar but is that an unfair assumption?

 

[hairyhandedfool]

What are people's experience of ringing TOCs (as opposed to NRE) with queries beyond the simple 'what time is there a train to x'? I tend to work on the assumption that I'll just get through to a call centre who won't know anything beyond the type of information anyone could get from a online ticket retailer website but is that an unfair assumption?

It's entirely unfair, online ticket retailer websites are much better

In all seriousness, I have known CR staff phone me at work to confirm some things about local travel that they couldn't really be expected to know, so some do go above and beyond the normal expectations.

 

[30907]

In theory the National Rail journey planner allows you to specify a particular TOC. However, it's one of the functions that I can't get to work.

 

[yorkie]

In my view, auto reply messages are a necessary evil. They do confirm that your email has got through to the right place, but they don't do much m or than that. ...

If they provide a reference number, that is potentially useful because if you do chase it up, you have a point of reference.

But if all they do is confirm the message got through, that's quite pointless.

 

[johntea]

Annoying when Northern finally do reply and miss the point of your letter to them entirely.

They could do with a spell checker too, suggesting I refer to the Railway Bylaws

 

[Greenback]

If they provide a reference number, that is potentially useful because if you do chase it up, you have a point of reference.

But if all they do is confirm the message got through, that's quite pointless.

I beg to differ. I know that if I get an automated acknowledgement, with or without a reference number, the recipient will find it difficult to claim they haven't received my message if they don't reply in a timely manner.

The old 'we didn't get it, it must be lost in the post' lies won't wash!

 

[ChorleyGeoff]

Depends exactly when you want to travel but as a couple of examples.....

Chorley dep 1305 (Huddersfield)
Manchester Victoria arr 1349 dep 1416 (Leeds)
Leeds arr 1543 dep 1625 (York)
York arr 1701

or

Chorley dep 1337 (Hazel Grove)
Salford Crescent arr 1408 dep 1413 (Stalybridge)
Manchester Victoria arr 1419 dep 1448 (Leeds)
Hebden Bridge arr 1519 dep 1533 (York)
York arr 1701

[You could go via Preston in less time]

Thanks for this. It was in attempting to compare journey times between the routes via Preston and via Manchester that I came across the difficulty in doing so. National Rail and other online sellers all offered routes which included at least one leg with TPExpress, despite my having selected Northern as preferred TOC.

 

[Deerfold]

Annoying when Northern finally do reply and miss the point of your letter to them entirely.

They could do with a spell checker too, suggesting I refer to the Railway Bylaws

If you're suggesting that's an incorrect spelling, you'd be wrong. Byelaw and Bylaw are alternative spellings.

 

[hassaanhc]

Thanks for this. It was in attempting to compare journey times between the routes via Preston and via Manchester that I came across the difficulty in doing so. National Rail and other online sellers all offered routes which included at least one leg with TPExpress, despite my having selected Northern as preferred TOC.

National Rail's "Pocket Timetable tool" does work to an extent. As long as you select "hide Transpennine Express" under the advanced options, it doesn't give you that operator but brings out Cross-country from Leeds on some options, which could be got around by searching that leg separately.
http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/pockettimetable/search

 

[Rail Ranger]

If you ring Traveline Manchester on 0161 228 7811 they can plan journeys using one particular Train Operator.