The Best Of The Public & Private Sector?

I am now almost 2 months into my public transport adventure and it’s not going too bad really. Sure, there are times I feel a bit miffed, like when the National Rail App tells me that my train is already 10 minutes late and the platform digital readout is refusing to acknowledge that the train is anything but on time.

Saving that, in the main, s’alright.

One evening, an engine failed and we couldn’t make it up the incline so we had to go back down the hill to Bromsgrove where the entire train was emptied into the night. This incident, whilst not traumatic, was a slight inconvenience as it was December and bloody cold. The next London Midland train, for it was they, wasn’t due to pass for another hour.

As is usual with this type of occurrence, London Midland, advise you to visit http://www.londonmidland.com/your-journey/delay-repay/ and fill out the online form for some recompense.

“If your London Midland journey is delayed by 30 minutes or 
more, we think you ought to be 
compensated whether it's our fault or not”.

Aw, thanks guys!

I dutifully filled out the form and got an e-mail confirming that my claim had been received and would be dealt with within 28 days.

Funny old thing, and it should have come as no surprise really, 28 days later I hadn’t heard anything and I had reason to put in another claim; a late train had caused me to miss my connection.

 As anyone who commutes and has to change trains at any point will tell you, connections are vital. Whether it’s ten seconds or ten minutes late, it doesn’t matter as your next train has gone and you won’t be heading to your destination in any form of punctual fashion.

I do find it funny that train companies don’t consider anything under ten minutes actually late. I’m sure form tutors and bosses up and down the country are shaking their heads and reaching for the red pen at that very notion.

Anyway, on Monday, my train from Wolves to Brum was 5 minutes late getting into Brum, so I missed the 7:19 to Hereford. The next Hereford train was due at 7:59 and come 7:59 I was sat on a rather full train waiting for the off. The engine stopped, the lights went out and a disembodied voice tannoyed thus:

“Sorry this train is cancelled. Sorry. We apologise. Sorry. It’s cancelled. There’s a fault with the train. Sorry. It’s not the snow, it’s the train. Sorry. The next train to Hereford, sorry, is 8:49 sorry”. 

This new delay would put me in work for around 10. A good hour and a half later than I intended.

I went to http://www.londonmidland.com/your-journey/delay-repay/ filled out the form and, while I was of a mind to, gave LMT a phone call to see what had happened to my other claim.

Whilst this is not an exact transcription, I’m pretty sure I was less sarcastic, it should give you the gist.

LMT: “When did you file your claim”?
Me: “18th of December”.
LMT: “Online or paper”?
Me: “Online”.
LMT: “Yeah we’ve got a bit of a backlog at the moment, we’re up to 23rd of November”.
Me: “Marvellous. So the claim I’m putting in today is going to take quite a bit of time as well then”.
LMT: “Um, yes”.
Me: “I also notice on the website that you state "Once we've validated the claim against our train running records, we'll send you the appropriate compensation in National Rail travel vouchers” Is that right"?
LMT: “That’s right”.
Me: “I have a season ticket. What good is a travel voucher to me”?
LMT: “Oh but they’re not limited to London Midland, you can use them on other franchises”.
Me: “Are you taking the mick”?
LMT: (slightly sheepish) “No”.
Me: “I’m not travelling around for fun. I use the trains for work and in these instances, it’s making me late. I also notice that the refund is only the partial price of the ticket”?
LMT: “Oh it’s not a refund, it’s compensation and you can save them up so that if they total more than forty pounds, you can exchange them for cash”.

At this point I thought there was no real point in continuing, which seems to be the goal of these schemes.

I could have argued further that it obviously isn’t compensation if the partial refund of a ticket, for being between half an hour and 2 hours late, comes nowhere near to the actual monetary loss that I would suffer by being late for work.

Also, how do you quantify the missed quality time with my Xbox, I mean, family and friends that arriving home so bloody late deprives me of?

“Darling! Carter Junior said his first words, took his first steps and is just the darlingest thing ever! He’s asleep now because it’s so damnebly late. Where were you”?

“London Midland cancelled my train into work this morning so I arrived 2 hours late and I had to finish late to make up the lost time".

“I want a divorce”.

“Took your time, didn’t you”?

Or something like that.

But Carter, I don’t hear you cry, if London Midland actually refunded the full amount or admitted full liability for the consequences of their piss poor performance, they wouldn’t make any money at all.

I can only respond that despite only 77% of London Midland trains running on time during December, they still received a nice wedge from the taxpayer in the form of RevenueSupport (scroll down to Signal Failures Private Eye #1328) and, well, all that pre-paid season ticket money is earning interest somewhere. LMT and the rest of British Rail, or whatever the hell they’re called these days, are far from being on the breadline.

No. Compensation would equate to getting me to a position where I would have been had LMT not screwed up. In the example above, I would be furnished with an hour and a half’s pay and a note to my boss saying “sorry we kept your best worker away from his duties, here’s a cheque for the amount that you guys charge for his time”. 

*THAT* would be the definition of compensation.

And what do London Midland do? They can’t even be straight enough to give us our money back. A travel voucher is not cash. I paid for my season ticket, six months worth of pre-paid travel, in cold hard cash. I need a travel voucher as much as I need a crash course in angry blogging.

So, instead of doing right by the tax payer and its customers, what do the train people actually spend the money on?

Infrastructure? 
No.

Drivers? 
No.

Nice trains for us to travel in? 
Certainly not.

Glossy leaflets and posters? 
Why, yes. Yes, that’s exactly what the cash gets spent on. Convincing us that nothing more needs to be spent on trains but a bigger kick up to the investors is required.

They advertise. They spend money on posters and PR departments to run twitter accounts which alternately say "sorry" or "we’re brilliant". They say sorry an awful lot which doesn't actually keep you warm on a frosty platform in the middle of nowhere.

Why are they saying sorry? Because they’ve focused on profit rather than service and are sorry you're making a noise.

So, for disrupting the day in such a fashion, London Midland tout their Delay Repay scheme, and let us be very clear, it is a scheme. A scheme which gives commuters Travel Vouchers. Travel vouchers of all things!

Travel Vouchers are the commuter's equivalent of an ashtray on a motorbike, a chocolate teapot, the rhythm method or tits on a boar. The value of the Travel Voucher is then prorated and discounted to a derisory and paltry amount.

Entitled to bugger all by the looks of it.

As the chap on the phone admitted, the backlog is rather large which proves two things.

Number 1:

The service has been that crap for the last few months there’s a backlog in “compensation”

Number 2:

London Midland show they are as committed to their Delay Repay scheme, as the banks are to giving back the money they stole in PPI scams,by under staffing it.

It’s a scheme to fend off the inevitable clamour that would ensue if they just said “hard cheese”. If there is a recourse offered, most people just shrug their shoulders and don't bother. Too much hassle.

You can always bank on the apathy of the Great British Public. You bastards. You've beaten our stiff upper lip and sense of fair play by being utterly rotten and not even sorry.

You take tax payer's cash before, during and after collecting money for season tickets. You get money from people that HAVE NO CHOICE IN WHAT TRAIN FRANCHISE THEY USE and again from the grossly inflated price of tickets bought on the day.

My god how you punish those poor saps that dare stumble upon your magical transportation network on the very day that they require access to other parts of the nation in person. 

£66 pounds for a single from Taunton to Wolverhampton? 135 miles? That’s not even a three hour journey!

Edit: I just checked and that single from Taunton to Wolverhampton is now £70. Seventy English Pounds, 84.28 Euros, $111.89 US, $110.32 Canadian, 3340 Thai Baht. I got the £66 price not 3 weeks ago. What on earth is going on here?

The PR though, oh dear lord it’s infuriating. Look at this nonsense. 

Wow, it’s a butterfly! Birmingham New Street is like a butterfly! It’s an ugly larvae now but soon it will emerge and we can get let down by London Midland in a pretty place!

What the hell is all that about?

We can see that there’s building work going on. We also know what builders and site workers look like so stop trying to make them all look happy, smiley and family friendly on glossy posters.

How about this one from London Midland. My jaw actually fell open.

Lying Graphic is a Liar

Since when have these trains been faster?

Since when have journey times been cut?

Cheaper fares? Are you absolutely sure about that? Train tickets have never been more expensive and have just risen by a whopping 6.2%  Surely it must be illegal to make false claims like that?

It may be a pretty graphic but it is a lie.

So, please, you, the managing director of London Midland, the transport secretary, my pointless MP, I can’t make these points clearly enough so I will put them in bigger letters for you:

Nobody is travelling at peak time for the thrill of it. Be sympathetic.

We do not choose a particular franchise to travel with because they have the nicest livery. It is because *that* is the train which goes at *that* time from *that* place.

The route we choose is because it is the route from point A to point B. Not because there is a John Lewis shop where we have to make a connection and change trains.

There is no market in a fixed timetable; we are bound to our jobs and circumstances. Choice does not really exist. You'll also find that trains aren't bursting at the seams all of the time; just on the major holidays. 

Adjust your pay on the day policy accordingly please.

Stop it, just stop pretending that we have a choice as to which train we use as we invariably don’t. 

Stop spending ridiculous amounts on advertising because we are not swayed by cunning slogans! You aren't going to bring people in from their cars with a campaign so don't try! 

Just treat the customers you do have correctly. Ha! You never know; word of mouth might just do it for you.

You’re a fucking train franchise! You receive millions upon millions of pounds from the tax payer to provide a pretty simple service. 


Weather problems? The seasons are fairly predictable. This is England. Assume rain!



This is not rocket science. This is 19th Century technology and you have had quite a bit of time to work this stuff out. 

That's enough shouting. Just get it right.