Passengers mixing up TOCs on Twitter

[jamesst]

Merseyrail Electrics operate the Northern and Wirral lines and have the twitter account 'Merseyrail'. However the Merseyrail (Merseytravel) network covers the Northern, Wirral AND City lines meaning stations operated by Arriva Rail Northern in the Merseyside area actually have Merseyrail branding. Some of the recent problems on Northern rail have resulted in 'interesting' tweets to say the least!

 

[xotGD]

Suppose you are a prospective passenger in Manchester..

Service to Glasgow: Trans-Pennine Express
Service to Liverpool: East Midlands Trains
Service to Crewe: Arriva Trains Wales

It's all so obvious.

 

[PeterC]

Add in Northern vs Great Northern, and Northern vs TPE. Both quite common in my experience

It is very easy to tag a tweet with the wrong handle. I work in the music business and I have seen a venue announce that they had a rock band from the west coast of the USA when they had booked a similarly named folk band from the UK.

Add in the ability of the Great British Public to misunderstand anything, however obvious ..........

 

[DanDaDriver]

Why should a passenger, who merely wants to get from A to B, be obliged to know the intimate details of our ridiculously fragmented railway system?

And just when you do learn the name of who runs what train, they go and change the name for the umpteenth time. All part of the farce.

Why should someone who merely wants to buy a pint of milk and 20B&H be obliged to know the name of the shop they’re in in our ridiculously fragmented shop system.

They shouldn’t have to look at the front of the shop to decide who to direct their anonymous twitter abuse at!

Many towns in Britain have two or more shops!! Ridiculous!!

I look forward to comrade Corbyn making us all queue at one government depot for our turnip ration so we are spared the ignominy of choice.

 

[Via Bank]

Why should someone who merely wants to buy a pint of milk and 20B&H be obliged to know the name of the shop they’re in in our ridiculously fragmented shop system.

They shouldn’t have to look at the front of the shop to decide who to direct their anonymous twitter abuse at!

Many towns in Britain have two or more shops!! Ridiculous!!

I look forward to comrade Corbyn making us all queue at one government depot for our turnip ration so we are spared the ignominy of choice.

I think you’ll find that it’s very rare for a branch of (eg) the Co-Op to have been bought out, or hired by, Asda, and for the Co-Op branding to remain on the store while this is happening.

It’s also quite rare for two mostly independent shop chains to have nearly identical branding, with half of them being (eg) Waitrose and half being Waitrose East Coast, with no interaction between businesses beyond them sharing their parent company.

It’s even less usual for the products from two or more supermarkets to be located in the same building, with competing groups of “revenue protection” personnel ready to give you a hefty penalty if you take any of your purchases to the wrong till.

 

[SaveECRewards]

We could easily prevent all this confusion by re-nationalisation.

I think you’ll find that it’s very rare for a branch of (eg) the Co-Op to have been bought out, or hired by, Asda, and for the Co-Op branding to remain on the store while this is happening.

It’s also quite rare for two mostly independent shop chains to have nearly identical branding, with half of them being (eg) Waitrose and half being Waitrose East Coast, with no interaction between businesses beyond them sharing their parent company.

It’s even less usual for the products from two or more supermarkets to be located in the same building, with competing groups of “revenue protection” personnel ready to give you a hefty penalty if you take any of your purchases to the wrong till.

The Co-op is an interesting example. When I lived in Windsor there were two Co-ops both branded as "The Co-operative food" at the time (this was before the Co-operative group revived the old Co-op logo) but one was run by the largest Co-operative Group (which makes up the majority of the brand in England) and the other one was owned by the Southern Co-operatives.

Back on train branding. VTWC and VTEC could easily have reduced the brand confusion if they wanted to.

Originally the VTEC Twitter icon was a slightly different shade of red and had East Coast under the logo.

These days Twitter allows longer display names, so instead of displaying as 'Virgin Trains EC' they could display as 'Virgin Trains East Coast' and 'Virgin Trains' as 'Virgin Trains West Coast' (I can see why when there was a character limit they were reluctant to use Virgin Trains WC as it sounds like it's a joke account tweeted from a train toilet). Then if they had East Coast and West Coast under the logos once more then a lot fewer people would be confused.

 

[whhistle]

Why should a passenger, who merely wants to get from A to B, be obliged to know the intimate details of our ridiculously fragmented railway system?

True. but then they can't moan when they don't know the right information.

I don't travel by plane much. I don't know the type of plane (usually), but I sure know who I'm travelling with.

Yes, it's complicated but it's peoples laze to learn that's the problem.

Hell, a lot of people don't even read emails that say "download your mobile ticket here" and try and claim it from a machine instead.

In my experience, people just aren’t very observant. People can find out things if they just look and take in information, rather than expect everything to be spoon fed.

This is correct.
I witness, almost daily, people trying to get into an office that is clearly clsoed (IE, lights off, no sign of life). Yet they still try. I've even seen peopple enter if it is open and try and buy tickets, even though it's all dark inside - clearly not ready to be operational!

 

[xotGD]

Why should someone who merely wants to buy a pint of milk and 20B&H be obliged to know the name of the shop they’re in in our ridiculously fragmented shop system.

They shouldn’t have to look at the front of the shop to decide who to direct their anonymous twitter abuse at!

Many towns in Britain have two or more shops!! Ridiculous!!

I look forward to comrade Corbyn making us all queue at one government depot for our turnip ration so we are spared the ignominy of choice.

Well, you are not obliged to know the name of the shop. And a pint of milk bought from any retailer is valid for making both cups of tea and cups of coffee. There is no restriction: 'Tesco milk may only be used to make cups of tea. If you use this milk to make a cup of coffee you will be subject to a penalty and obliged to buy a new bottle of milk.' And then you end up in a dispute as to whether Chai Latte is considered to be a cup of tea or not.

 

[GodAtum]

This is the problem with people today, not taking any responsibility for themselves. When you're flying, you most likely know who you're flying with. If you spending £10k on a car, you're likely to know what make and model it is.

 

[xotGD]

This is the problem with people today, not taking any responsibility for themselves. When you're flying, you most likely know who you're flying with. If you spending £10k on a car, you're likely to know what make and model it is.

Flying - not really. Code shares, franchises, wet lease, dry lease, interlining. Just because I have a Wibble Air ticket and flight number doesn't mean that I'll be flying on a Wibble Air plane. And unless I'm an aviation crank, will I care?

 

[NickBucks]

because real people are not experts like everyone here. They make errors, unlike everyone here.

Thank you. One of the most sensible posts on this forum in a long time.

 

[DavidGrain]

If you are at Birmingham International and want to get to Birmingham New Street. Which train do you get on?

West Midlands Railways
London Northwestern
Virgin West Coast
Cross Country
Arriva Trains Wales
London Midland (as was announced last time I did this journey in April this year!)

Answer: The next one. So how can you expect Joe Public to know who to complain to?

 

[Parallel]

If you are at Birmingham International and want to get to Birmingham New Street. Which train do you get on?

West Midlands Railways
London Northwestern
Virgin West Coast
Cross Country
Arriva Trains Wales
London Midland (as was announced last time I did this journey in April this year!)

Answer: The next one. So how can you expect Joe Public to know who to complain to?

Depending if you have a TOC ticket, which is a whole other can of worms. Thankfully it is made as clear as possible on departure boards at the Virgin managed larger stations, as well as New St.

 

[pdeaves]

For amusement's sake:
I was once in a 'big' Tesco store and watched (because I was further back in the queue) as someone took an item back for a refund. The process went well, the assistant was polite and efficient. Then she asked the customer for the receipt. The customer handed it over, whereupon it was pointed out that it was an Asda receipt and a refund could not be authorised here.

 

[DavidGrain]

Following on the above about customers getting mixed up, I used to work for a parcels delivery company and we had what we called 'the sin bin' for parcels that could not be delivered or returned (labels missing etc). I was working in Accounts and one day one of our supervisors brought me a parcel of tax reference books which had got lost. I studied it and found that it had the labels of another delivery company on it so how it got lost in our system I have no idea.

 

[rebmcr]

From what I've experienced, customers that don't travel often tend to confuse who they've booked with against who they've travelled with. So they might have travelled with Northern or TransPennine but because they've booked with Virgin Trains East Coast, they'll complain to us.

Or get told to.

I was trying to find out (by telephone) about Advance ticket acceptance a few years back for a Euston-Manchester journey that was affected by disruption. I was told to contact East Coast since I had booked it on their website.