I am able to use EMT, WMT, LNW and Merseyrail regularly. All of the Abellio ran ones are horrifically bad, also have the misfortune of Scotrail on occasions. I can think of literally nothing positive to say about them.
Can you name one TOC that you can say something positive about though?
Let me guess, Virgin Trains?
People seem to expect a lot from rail companies, but fail to realise their standards of expectation do not meet reality.
EMT are very much bang average but their customer satisfaction levels are still amongst the highest out of all TOCs in the UK which tells us all we need to know.
Maybe it's just EMT passengers don't know what they're missing?
Remember, EMT is old fashioned. They haven't changed very much from National Express days of Midland Mainline.
Their systems are old. Their processes are old. The uniform is literally the same as National Express had, just different colours. It's like they literally took the National Express operation from the 90s and carried on with it - 20 years later!
So many customers have only ever known the National Express / Stagecoach operation of the franchise.
To be fair on Stagecoach, they have done an okay job of refurbishing some of their local stock. But as has been said elsewhere, the 222's are, on the whole, scrappy.