Saw Charlie the other day and he brought up an old complaint I made to National Rail - well, when I say "brought up" I mean that him and Heather took the piss out of me for being mental for five minutes.
Anyway, just in case you're bored and have 10 minutes reading time, it's below, with scans and pictures omitted:
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to complain about the conditions of a journey I undertook from Salisbury to Teignmouth on the evening of Saturday 3rd March 2007. When I began my journey, I expected to follow this itinerary:
STATION ARR. DEP.
Salisbury 20:56
Westbury 21:22 21:30
Exeter St. Davids 22:42 22:48
Teignmouth 23:33
I was previously aware that the Exeter – Teignmouth leg of the journey would be a replacement bus service due to the maintenance work currently occurring at weekends between Exeter and Paignton, so the journey was already slower than I would have liked.
Between Salisbury and Westbury there were only 3 passengers, including myself, on the train. One of these was an extremely drunk gentleman who caused a great deal of bother to me, including at one point trying to grab my mobile phone out of my hand. He flouted anti-smoking laws and smoked three cigarettes whilst sat at a table adjacent to me, the first of which was briefly interrupted by a member of the train staff who seemed reluctant to actually do much about his behaviour. His consistent shouting and abusive language left me feeling particularly uneasy about his presence on the train, yet the train staff just simply couldn’t be bothered to entertain the hassle of punishing him.
When I alighted at Westbury, the station was fairly empty and I was immediately approached by a member of staff who asked me if I was intending on getting the train from Westbury to Exeter. When I answered in the positive, he told me the train had been cancelled (despite my asking why, he would not give me any good reason and vaguely put it down to a “timetabling issue”). He told me to get back onto the train and keep going to Bristol, where I could catch a train down to Exeter. I got back on the train and continued my journey. Ten minutes or so later, a member of the train staff onboard asked me if I was going to Exeter, and he told me not to get off at Bristol as I wouldn’t make it in time for the train from Bristol to Exeter. Instead I was told to get off at Bath and get the 22:00 train to Exeter St. Davids.
Upon alighting at Bath Spa, I saw that the train to Exeter St. Davids would not arrive until 23:48, a quarter of an hour after I should have already reached my final destination of Teignmouth. I was fully aware that I would miss the replacement bus service from Exeter that my original itinerary included, so I asked a member of staff onboard what to do about it. He said it would be sorted for me, and shortly after that another member of staff came through the train and surveyed everyone, asking if they were intending to travel further than Exeter, so that alternate coach transport could be organised. I informed him that I was travelling to Teignmouth, and he noted this down.
When we pulled into Exeter there was a small group of staff waiting outside the Station Manager’s office who shouted to the departing passengers that there were buses to Newton Abbot and Plymouth waiting outside. I followed the crowd round to these buses, where I asked a member of station staff in an orange jacket which of the two buses was the one heading to Teignmouth. I was told to join the queue for the bus at the front, and after about a ten minute wait, a female member of staff who seemed to be organising all of the alternative transport and looked particularly stressed, informed those of us who were waiting for the front bus to open its doors that we should get onto the 2nd bus, as “that will now cover both routes”. So, trusting in what I had been told, I got onto that bus.
The first stop the bus took was Newton Abbot, this did surprise me slightly considering Teignmouth would usually come just before Newton Abbot, but I safe in the knowledge of what I had been told by the orange-jacketed member of staff at Exeter St. Davids, I remained on the bus and presumed the driver had simply taken a different route. As soon as I saw him fail to take a signposted turn off to Teignmouth, I walked up the bus and spoke to him, asking him why he hadn’t stopped in Teignmouth. He told me that the bus was scheduled to stop only at Newton Abbot, Totnes, and Plymouth. I let him know that I had been told at the station that the bus would call into Teignmouth, but of course there was nothing he could do for me at that time, and I knew I would now have to end up going through the hassle of getting a taxi back to Teignmouth and having to claim it back from you. After I had spoken to the driver, we didn’t go through any built-up areas that would have been appropriate to alight and get a taxi from, so I had to wait until the bus pulled up at Totnes station, and I got off there.
I immediately phoned one of the numbers from the notice board at the station with an array of taxi numbers, and after ten minutes of waiting in the cold, a taxi picked me up, finally taking me to Teignmouth at the cost of £36, arriving over two hours late at 01:40am. Please find below scans of the taxi receipt:
If you need any further confirmation of this taxi journey, I believe the firm was called Castle Cabs, contactable on 01803 868686. Unfortunately it was only when I came to scan this receipt a moment ago that I noticed the firm’s contact details weren’t present.
As if that wasn’t enough trauma for one journey, because of the late time I returned home, I had been locked out of the house with no way to get back in, and I had to wait in a 5’ x 3’ porch for 5 hours until 6:45am when I was let in. Whilst I can’t directly blame you for having to wait in the cold porch, which has since given me severe back pain, there is no way this would have happened had you delivered a proper rail service, or even a proper replacement bus service, that night. I dread to think how much worse it could have been had I been an elderly lady, had there not been any taxis available from Totnes, or had I not had a mobile phone or enough cash on me at the time.
Whilst I appreciate that trains get cancelled from time to time, I don’t appreciate not being told why, and I really, really don’t appreciate being given inaccurate information by a member of staff which leads me to lose £36, many hours, and risk my health for the sake of what should have been a simple journey.
This is the latest in a line of recent disappointments with the rail service. Two weeks ago, a friend who was visiting me in Teignmouth from Exeter was given wrong information by a member of station staff, and was told that he should go from Exeter to Newton Abbot and then Newton Abbot to Teignmouth in order to get the journey done as quickly as possible. He was told he would have to wait no more than five minutes at Newton Abbot, but there were no trains for almost 45 minutes and he was stranded at Newton Abbot, again paying the price for trusting a member of staff at Exeter St. Davids – it’s pretty worrying to have to begin to question the ability of such members of staff and the accuracy of their knowledge.
And a month ago, a journey from Hove to Teignmouth should have taken me just over 4 hours, yet when the train from Hove to Southampton Central was just seven minutes late, a domino effect caused me to miss all the trains I would have liked to have caught and the journey ended up taking me over 10 hours as I was forced to follow a ridiculous route back home.
Despite this letter’s rant, I am not the complaining type, but the added impact of having to pay for my own taxi from Totnes to Teignmouth has obviously given me no choice but to write and claim the money back from you. In the two recounted examples above, where a great deal of time has been wasted, the lack of any financial effect means that there would be no real grounds to seek compensation, and as such, it feels to me that station staff, and rail operators at large, cannot be held accountable for delayed or cancelled services, or perhaps most worryingly, the distribution of inaccurate information
Whilst I can realistically hold you responsible for no more than £36, I hope this letter has enabled you to understand that your mistakes have cost me so much more than mere financial implications, from the ineffectiveness the staff on the first train showed in dealing with a troublesome passenger, right through to the excessive hours I had to endure travelling on wrong buses and waiting in a cold porch. I hope your response will take into account the true nature of my disillusionment.
I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.
Yours truly,
Matt Morrison
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Got the £36 back for the taxi but nothing more, the cunts.
Raspberries and maths now:
Dear Sir or Madam,
On a recent trip to Oxford to visit relatives, I called into Amesbury Co-Op for some lunchtime/car journey-style snacks with my mother and sister.
I’ll keep the story brief – you are (were; offer ended 1st June) advertising that your Co-operative Raspberries (225g Class 1) were being sold at half price, reduced from £2.99 to £1.99 per pack.
I’m sure you are aware that half price should actually be £1.49 and not £1.99. We had absolutely no luck trying to convince the lady who served us of the problem and when she started saying things like “yeah, look, they are half price – you get a pound off” we realised we were at a dead end, so gave up and decided to just send the evidence to you guys.
Of course, whilst I can understand that it isn’t necessary to ensure that customer service assistants have passed their GCSE Maths exam, it’s pretty shocking that whole departments (pricing, marketing, store display team, etc.) can let obvious mistakes like this slip through the net!
I would have been happy of course with just getting my rightful 50p refund at the till, but now that I’ve been forced into writing to you, I’m sure you’ll compensate me with a whole year of free raspberries or something similar.
Yours mathematically,
Matt Morrison
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They quite enjoyed the fun letter and wrote back quite a funny one themselves about GCSEs and lifetime supplies of raspberries, with a £5 voucher.