When I was working on the frontline we were encouraged to provide feedback to the pricing managers and the retail systems managers, and it was still happening when I was in the latter role up to a couple of years ago. I'm sure that those in similar roles in your TOC would be pleased to hear your concerns.
It can feel like pestering people who have more important things to deal with when feeding stuff back. One thing I would raise is when fares were clearly missing from the database, which is something that can take in excess of 10 years to be addressed and cause customers to be charged inconsistent fares depending on what workaround each individual finds. It’s a lot easier to keep one’s head down.
Anomalous fares in the passenger’s favour however tend to be rectified rapidly if they are known about. I’ve got a whole list of them which have been in the system for years, presumably as they’ve stayed under the radar.
I did have some good experiences though. A report for missing fares priced by a different TOC was sorted promptly. A more technical matter arose from a customer who came to the ticket offices complaining that a Super Off Peak ticket was no longer valid on their usual mid-morning train. It took me about 30 seconds to deduce that the timetable had changed, speeding that train up and that the logic behind the restriction code in question was based on the old train times, so that journey was actually broken in the planners. I did bundle up this information and handed it to the relevant pricing manager, who did get it fixed quickly.
And I do make use of the information in the iKb, in my capacity as a ticket office clerk, to get these matters resolved. I presume that’s why it’s there.
