Virgin ticket office at Manchester Piccadilly

[Welshman]

Amongst all the tales of angst at certain ticket offices, I'd just like to mention the young lady at the Virgin office at Manchester Piccadilly last Saturday, who very efficiently issued me with an over-distance excess of £0.00 on my return "Manchester Stns-Rhyl" ticket to Abergele & Pensarn, cheerfully and with no quibble. I was impressed.

 

[Nym]

Amongst all the tales of angst at certain ticket offices, I'd just like to mention the young lady at the Virgin office at Manchester Piccadilly last Saturday, who very efficiently issued me with an over-distance excess of £0.00 on my return "Manchester Stns-Rhyl" ticket to Abergele & Pensarn, cheerfully and with no quibble. I was impressed.

The exception that proves the rule, I have had equally plesent staff at Euston and St Pancras, but yet to have impressive ticket office staff at Kings Cross...

Still, this is all by LSE standards...

 

[Starmill]

Hmmmm, blind luck I'd say.

 

[gnolife]

Hmmmm, blind luck I'd say.

I go out of my way to avoid having to deal with one particularly obnoxious member of staff there. She seems to have an inexhaustible supply of feeble excuses to not sell me tickets that I ask for, ranging from ' but this is Manchester Piccadilly' if I ask for a ticket from a different station, to 'I need to see the other railcard holders' when asking for seat reservations for tickets to be used several weeks into the future

 

[trentside]

Always nice to hear a positive mention of ticket office staff

My only experience with Virgin at Manchester Piccadilly has been doing a SILK with them over the phone. Found the girl I spoke to very pleasant and efficient, makes a change from some other offices I've done the same process with - not naming them, for obvious reasons!

I go out of my way to avoid having to deal with one particularly obnoxious member of staff there. She seems to have an inexhaustible supply of feeble excuses to not sell me tickets that I ask for, ranging from ' but this is Manchester Piccadilly' if I ask for a ticket from a different station, to 'I need to see the other railcard holders' when asking for seat reservations for tickets to be used several weeks into the future

Asking to see railcards when it's just for seat reservations? That's ridiculous!

 

[Harlesden]

My one experience at King's Cross involved booking a forward facing seat only to find myself travelling backwards all the way from King's Cross to Doncaster. Booked online ever since.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

My one experience at King's Cross involved booking a forward facing seat only to find myself travelling backwards all the way from King's Cross to Doncaster. Booked online ever since.

That is not necessarily the clerks fault though.

 

[yorkie]

I've also had some excellent service at Manchester Piccadilly.

I found Stockport to be knowledgeable and efficient, but he refused to issue an excess for a group of us travelling at a later date, on the basis that I had not borrowed the Railcards of some of the group members! I would have booked online, except that was impossible.

That is not necessarily the clerks fault though.

Agreed. We don't know the TOC (Grand Central/Hull Trains could be either way round) and if it was East Coast, the train may have been in reverse formation, or the information on the system may have been incorrect.

I have known trains to be shown facing the wrong way on EC's online seat selector, it does occasionally happen!

 

[hairyhandedfool]

Aswell as that, where TOCs no longer have F/B on the seat numbers (which I think is all TOCs these days) it is impossible for the clerk to know which way the seat is facing unless they have a seating plan handy or the reservation system tells them (they don't always).

 

[Starmill]

I go out of my way to avoid having to deal with one particularly obnoxious member of staff there. She seems to have an inexhaustible supply of feeble excuses to not sell me tickets that I ask for, ranging from ' but this is Manchester Piccadilly' if I ask for a ticket from a different station, to 'I need to see the other railcard holders' when asking for seat reservations for tickets to be used several weeks into the future

Hm. Off the top of my head: I've been refused Levenshulme to Bradford route via Hebden Bridge on the grounds that 'that's the long way around'...

Sometimes when I arrive without a ticket they refuse to sell me a ticket from the station I just got on at to Manchester CTLZ and instead do it from Manchester STNS Which means no free tram!

There was one man who insisted on giving me 'EDUC' discounted tickets, which were wrong and kept (rightly) getting me into trouble with Northern staff (not G4S).

I once had to stand at the counter for nearly 10 minutes because they wouldn't give me my advance tickets without stapling them to a T&Cs thing.
Guess where the box was eventually found? In the microwave!

 

[yorkie]

Hm. Off the top of my head: I've been refused Levenshulme to Bradford route via Hebden Bridge on the grounds that 'that's the long way around'...

What?! That's arguably the shortest route! :roll:

Also by refusing to sell the ticket, he is not acting within the terms of the Ticketing & Settlement Agreement (TSA), and is in fact depriving Northern of revenue (Northern would get much less money from sales of the Any Permitted ticket).