There are some times that, despite your better judgement, you just can’t help but make noise about something. Somethings I like to discuss because they really interest me. Somethings I just can't help but discuss because it really winds me up. Enter Debbie:
I travelled to London this weekend and during my journey, I had this misfortune of coming across a ‘one’ Railway (our local train service company) representative Debbie Rothwell who approached our brief encounter with an attitude I’d expect less of a train guard and more of a prison guard. She would, in fact, offer me that very experience later (which I declined). It’s very rare that I’m angered to such an extent, but this company representative had an undeniably aggressive demeanour and refused point blank to listen to my thoughts. She also refused to allow me to speak with her supervisor (“that’s me” she said in response).
The initial dispute was a minor one. When I bought my ticket on the outbound train the previous morning, the conductor didn’t inform me that the return ticket was for use on that day only. Had he done so, I’d have purchased a different ticket. Debbie informed me that this would have cost an additional 50p and that it was my responsibility to make sure I was sold the correct ticket, not that of the salesperson. However, I wasn't aware that this was the case and, as a result, I was attempting to commit ‘travel fraud’. These are the words of the on-hand Transport Police representative. In the end, I walked away with a £40 fine and a two and a half hour delay at Ipswich train station but I feel Debbie has taught me an important lesson.
The reason that I found this scenario such a blood boiling experience, is that there is absolutely nothing you can do as a customer of a train operator such as ‘one’. It’s something you’d never find in any other walk of business (unless you’re dealing with the tax man). As a paying customer I was treated like a criminal. The reason that Debbie and the rest of the appropriately named ‘one’ Railway staff, can treat me in such a way is that the company is fortunate enough to have been able to buy a monopoly. They are the only option if you want to take public transport between East Anglia (on the whole) and the rest of the country as they’ve bought the rights to supply this service from the government. It’s a luxury that very few businesses have and fortunately I don’t have to deal with any others.
In my time I’ve experienced some pretty poor customer experiences. I joined ‘3’ soon after the company launched and they simply weren’t able to meet the demand. I ended up be billed for three months of service without a phone because I was never able to speak to the person that could sort out why it hadn’t been sent. That was frustrating because I couldn’t do anything. But that’s the same frustration as when a train is late – you feel, although annoying, that these things happen and someone is actually trying to help. My impressions were of the very opposite this weekend.
Part of the dispute was the fact that I was expected to know, in detail this ins and outs of the company’s processes. I should have been aware of what the actual ticket that I needed was and specifically I was expected to know exactly what information the train guard needed to be able to sell me the correct ticket. I didn’t, he assuming incorrectly that I wanted a one-day ticket, and the result was I was fined and heavily delayed.
I’m going to talk more about this in my next update, but not so much in a negative way. Quite often when someone buys a website, they end up with something that they didn’t exactly want or need and it ends up costing them in the long run. I’m going to look into, briefly, the steps that we go through to ensure that a customer is going to get exactly what they wanted and that it’s the most appropriate ticket for their ride.
Rant over. (At least temporarily).