Last Friday I arrived at Leicester approximately 16:55 (off the 16:21 from Derby), wanting to travel home. The 16:48 to Birmingham although not really relevant as it doesn't stop at my station, was no where to be seen and was expected at 17:09, and the 15:52 from New Street had arrived on platform 1 where it should form part of the 17:18 to New Street, along with the 16:09 from New Street.
Someone within XC decided to send this unit as the 16:48, to not add any stops, and with a already decided upon train crew who were present and for once with platform staff aware. Of course there were already passengers for stops the 16:48 doesn't stop at on board, and the unit eventually left for Nuneaton, Coleshill and New Street around 17:07. While this was happening the 17:18 was announced as a platform alteration to platform 4 and 1k23 arrived on platform 4 at 17:04 (RT), with the train crew for the 17:18. XC control then decided to try and get the unit from the original 16:48 to attach on arrival at Leicester, which at this point was estimated at 17:16, making an 17:18 departure impossible. Around 17:23 with no sign of the arrival from Standsted the decision was made to send the severely overcrowded 2 car unit solo to Birmingham. Of course by this time we had to wait for the London train to go from platform 3, so the 17:18 was eventually 9 minutes late and at 40% of it's booked capacity.
By the time the other train had left it was only around 10 mins ahead of 17:18, so they needlessly disrupted another service in order to avoid paying Delay Repay for Nuneaton and Birmingham passengers without thinking about any of the consequences for the smaller stations (with over 700,000 users between them), simply because it's cheaper for them to be 20 mins and 10 mins late on separate services than 30 mins late on 1 service.
) and every one of them has been on time (except one which left 2 minutes late but was RT Plymouth) they had all started in Scotland as well, so I would say that in my experience they do rather well.
