On Sunday 4th May our fourteen year old daughter got on the 10:46am Northern Rail train at Whaley Bridge after a sleepover at a friends, coming to meet us at Heaton Chapel, the station after Stockport. She purchased a single ticket from the guard on the train to Heaton Chapel and paid the child’s single fare of £3:30.
As we arrived at Heaton Chapel to meet her we get a frantic phone call to say “the train hasn’t stopped”, we agree to meet her at Levenshulme and set of in pursuit. We discuss if the train will stop there, and as we are deciding we get a second call to say, “it’s not stopped at Levenshulme either”. We tell her that it won’t probably stop now until Piccadilly and say she should get off there and get the next train back that stops at either Heaton Chapel or Stockport.
Firstly she is evidently told there isn’t a train back till 3;15pm (what nonsense!) and phones me to say she is going to the ticket office to buy a ticket. I say “no-way, you’ve already paid to travel to Heaton Chapel, and that’s all your trying to do, get on a train back!”
Forty minutes or so later we collect her from Stockport Station, only to discover that, when she got off the
train at Piccadilly, and tried to find how to get back, she was stopped by a ticket collector, who couldn’t speak English properly and was too dim to understand anything about the fact that here he had a customer, a child, who was not where she wanted (and had paid) to be but at a major City Station where she had never been before, and somewhat upset and distressed.
Instead of assisting her and getting on to the correct train back this idiot made her pay for a ticket from Heaton Chapel to Piccadilly and then left her off the platform!! (and charged it at the Adult rate £2:30)
What about the guard who had sold her the ticket in the first place? surely he knew that the train did not stop at Heaton Chapel, shouldn’t some part of that ticket sale have included “this train doesn’t stop at Heaton Chapel, you’ll have to change at Stockport“?
At this point I escorted her back to the ticket office at Stockport Station, to “give them a piece of my mind”, only to be met by “Kate”, the hardest faced, least customer friendly, employee (at least I hope they haven’t any less empathetic people!) of, evidently, Virgin Rail, who told me I needed to address Northern Rail, not Virgin. Apparently Virgin take no responsibility for matters at Stockport (they’ll sell you a train ticket, but I suppose you’ll have to go home and print out a platform ticket or boarding pass on-line!). She supplied us with a prepaid “complaint form” for Northern Rail but was totally unable smile, be concerned, or helpful. Apparently Northern Rail have no local representatives, or possibly don’t work on Sundays, or maybe they can’t speak very much English, I don’t know?
This happened on the day Ed Milliband was urged by prospective Labour MPs to re-nationalise the Railways (YAY!) and left Julie and I reminiscing about when we were younger and traveled widely by rail, and always were fussed over and looked after by the railway staff (is that why they were called Guards?)
Where here was any sort of “duty of care”, basic human kindness, customer service ? It was not a major incident or any real danger to anyone, but had it been, would any of the people and organisations concerned been up to it, or perhaps even interested in helping rather than saying “its not my job”
You then get to think about all of the industries and companies that the Thatcher Tories “privatised”, The Railways, the Gas and Electric and Water industries, Nationalised Banks, Postal Services. Competition would mean they would serve their customers better, become more efficient (i.e cheaper!!), Well have they done? or in fact are these not the industries that have all been in crisis ever since?, rising prices, less employees, less service and no profit for anyone (even in many cases the shareholders have taken a beating?), sorry that is of course excluding the senior management who have managed to see their payments swell massively whilst the average Joe’s have gone downhill?