Is any TOC more hated by its customers than Southeastern?

[EM2]

When the level crossing incident happened earlier in the week, I started following the #southeastern hashtag on Twitter.
http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=#southeastern
Wow...their customers REALLY don't like them, do they? Have they overtaken FGW and FCC as the most hated TOC?

 

[AlterEgo]

Par for the course I'm afraid.

Apparently some people must obviously think that SET put the car on the crossing in the first place!

 

[northwichcat]

Southeastern have got the national media getting at them for any little thing that goes wrong. FCC and FGW have had similar before.

If the national media was based in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds or Preston I imagine we'd have regular stories about Pacers and complaining about a lack of carriages on TPE.

All TOCs get passenger criticism. Remember most passengers don't know what is the operator's decision and what is DfT's decision.

 

[Schnellzug]

Everyone thinks their particular company is the worst in the world. It's a scientifcally proven phenomenon.
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reading those important insights into people's lives reminds me why I've never bothered with t*****r.

 

[HYPODERMIC]

Southeastern have got the national media getting at them for any little thing that goes wrong. FCC and FGW have had similar before.

If the national media was based in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds or Preston I imagine we'd have regular stories about Pacers and complaining about a lack of carriages on TPE.

Yeah, I think there's a bit of truth in this.

Northern, for example, operate a ton of overcrowded services, have the oldest and dirtiest trains in the country, and are run on a zero-growth basis. That strikes me as candidacy for 'worst TOC' (although they do the best with what they have if you ask me) yet, while they attract passenger disdain and some media attention, do appear to be as regularly berated in the press as FCC and SouthEastern.

SouthEastern, by contrast, operate HS1, have some of the newest trains in the country, and have a PPM almost exactly the same as Northern's, yet I've seen them crop up quite frequently in the media.

Mind you, I don't buy into the London-centrism theories as much as some others (ever since I moved up North I have started to see a lot of truth in it though!) but there does seem to be a perception that certain London-serving TOCs are particularly terrible.

I think that's probably as much to do with TfL running a fairly tight ship though, and if you're used to the Underground and the Overground "just working" all the time (recent works excluded!) then National Rail must seem like a bit of a botch job.

Probably because it is.

 

[ainsworth74]

Northern, for example, operate a ton of overcrowded services, have the oldest and dirtiest trains in the country, and are run on a zero-growth basis.

Are you sure about that

See here, table 6.1b page 92.

 

[Lampshade]

Follow the #northernfail hashtag

 

[Schnellzug]

Are you sure about that

See here, table 6.1b page 92.

before looking at Table 6.1b, who can guess who has an Average age of 73.25 ?

 

[ginger]

Northern, for example, operate a ton of overcrowded services, have the oldest and dirtiest trains in the country, and are run on a zero-growth basis. That strikes me as candidacy for 'worst TOC' (although they do the best with what they have if you ask me) yet, while they attract passenger disdain and some media attention, do appear to be as regularly berated in the press as FCC and SouthEastern.

:

Try NXEA.......they are up there with old, filthy, unrefurbished, late and overcrowded trains!

But I think they trump Northern by treating their customers with complete and utter contempt!

 

[HYPODERMIC]

Are you sure about that

See here, table 6.1b page 92.

Blimey, time to get #islandlinefail trending, eh?

A very surprising table, to be honest; not sure how Northern does so well - I suspect the soon-to-depart 180s are distorting it upwards a little. Still, I was wrong though, and a bit wrong about the media too - right on cue, the BBC write an article about Pacers in Yorkshire!

Mind you, you can't go on age alone - East Coast and Great Western come out of that table poorly, but I suspect many on here would say that their old stuff is many miles better than Virgin/XC's new stuff.

Try NXEA.......they are up there with old, filthy, unrefurbished, late and overcrowded trains!

But I think they trump Northern by treating their customers with complete and utter contempt!

Ah, yes, NXEA. I'd forgotten about them. Now there's a two-minute hate I could sign up to!

 

[SouthEastern-465]

To be fair what ever you do passengers complain, even if trains are on time you get some idiot complaining about trains being late... No win situation.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

How many customers complain about "dirty trains" when they leave a slick of Metro's , banana skins , beers cans and so on on the floor etc - as well as (the piece de resistance last week - someone who dropped a tea bag on the floor of a clean 319)

Casually pointing this out - plus the feet on seats brigade (not neccesarily limited to yobs) - often pays dividends , though you have to choose your moment.

What do people really expect ? Answers on a postcard please !!!

 

[SF-02]

I've used a few train companies regularly over recent years, and am not one to rant and rave without finding out reasons for problems and giving companies the benefit of the doubt.

With that said southeastern are the worst company I have dealt with in a long time, train or otherwise. I loath them. Constant short formations since the spring, due to 'faulty trains'. For years 8 coaches have been the norm for many rush hour trains. For the past 6 months that is now 6 and inadequate. Now it's regularly 4 and beyond awful.

I wrote and asked why. In the summer they said for de-icing equipment and all would be fine by autumn. This was never communicated online or at stations I will add. Then they had a big press release in September for the completion. Yet only 20 trains across the whole fleet had the de-icing, and short formations and cancellations are worse now. They now say it's other maintainance that must be done at the same time. Again, nothing online or any publicity. The traction on networkers was replaced only a couple of years ago. I've heard it's due to sacking staff.

It's strange. It was fine until May this year and terrible since. That was the time I heard they got rid of depot staff. I wish someone could prove or disprove that. I can't believe southeastern at all.

And let's not forget their performance antics in snowfall by announcing emergency 2 per hour services the day before snow was predicted, when the forecast was for a less than 50% chance. It didn't snow yet they still ran the unusable service. The emergency timetable excused them from performance stats, which they scrapped through by 0.4% or something.
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Southeastern have got the national media getting at them for any little thing that goes wrong. FCC and FGW have had similar before.

If the national media was based in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds or Preston I imagine we'd have regular stories about Pacers and complaining about a lack of carriages on TPE.

All TOCs get passenger criticism. Remember most passengers don't know what is the operator's decision and what is DfT's decision.

The London media are mostly based in north/west London. SE London is the poorest part of london, and not many luvvies live there. When the trains are screwed, as is now increasingly common, it hardly gets a mention in London media such as the Standard or BBC London. When South West trains or the tube go tits up, coverage is much more extensive.

I only moved back to London last year after 6 away. I know all about London centric media, but southeastern really are bad at the moment, and they don't get the flack they would if they were a company that served more prosperous parts of the capital.

 

[tbtc]

Which part of SE gets the most criticism, the Kentish services or the "Metro" ones?

 

[yorksrob]

To be fair, the South East was always a tricky corner of the network to run (a heavy duty service, tangle of terminals and lots of flat junctions etc) However, as an infrequent traveller (although always several times a year) it always seemed very expensive compared to everywhere else in the country I go.

That said, the trains seem well kept and not too crowded (off-peak anyway) and the buffet trolley service on the main line to Ashford is impressively reliable so I've started to soften my view of them lately.

I do avoid the over-priced high speed line though.

 

[SF-02]

Which part of SE gets the most criticism, the Kentish services or the "Metro" ones?

I use the metro services. I have recently taken some kent trains on 2 different days and had long delays on every service. I don't know the reasons though for those.
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To be fair, the South East was always a tricky corner of the network to run (a heavy duty service, tangle of terminals and lots of flat junctions etc) However, as an infrequent traveller (although always several times a year) it always seemed very expensive compared to everywhere else in the country I go.

That said, the trains seem well kept and not too crowded (off-peak anyway) and the buffet trolley service on the main line to Ashford is impressively reliable so I've started to soften my view of them lately.

I do avoid the over-priced high speed line though.

It may be tricky but the metro has generally been good and I've used it for many years, with some gaps during that time, but the service has nosedived since May. Worse than ever before. Something's amiss.

 

[SouthEastern-465]

I use the metro services. I have recently taken some kent trains on 2 different days and had long delays on every service. I don't know the reasons though for those.

Not jumping to conclusions on what actually caused the delays but NR are responsible for the infrastructure NOT SouthEastern if that is the reason behind the delays.

 

[SF-02]

Not jumping to conclusions on what actually caused the delays but NR are responsible for the infrastructure NOT SouthEastern if that is the reason behind the delays.

I know and I wouldn't blame southeastern for them at all without finding out the cause. Just found it interesting that my first forays away from the now poor metro service were equally as poor, though without knowing who was at fault I can't blame SE.

I do blame SE for not having the staff, and the constant short trains on the metro services, without a word of communications online or at stations.

Do you work for southeastern or have any insight into what has gone wrong? I really want to know and SE wont give any real answers. I'm baffled it could go from decent to crap so quickly.

 

[SouthEastern-465]

I know and I wouldn't blame southeastern for them at all without finding out the cause. Just found it interesting that my first forays away from the now poor metro service were equally as poor, though without knowing who was at fault I can't blame SE.

I do blame SE for not having the staff, and the constant short trains on the metro services, without a word of communications online or at stations.

Do you work for southeastern or have any insight into what has gone wrong? I really want to know and SE wont give any real answers. I'm baffled it could go from decent to crap so quickly.

No I don't work for SouthEastern!

To be honest I've never come across these problems, I've found there station staffed, trains as long as they need to be (or as long as possible) and have not had many problems with the exception of the winter chaos.

The only unstaffed places seem to be at night or country stops that not many people use.

The metros not bad and is quite frequent (4 tph where I live) and is usually formed of 6 car trains off peak and 8 - 10 car trains in the peak hour.

I've no complaints I've seen places in the North that are worse off.

 

[TrenHotel]

Many of Southeastern's actual problems may be caused by Network Rail or idiots screwing up level crossings, but it's compounded by a lack of on-the-ground communication to passengers and staff, and arrogant corporate PR. Quite simply, Southeastern pretty much treats its passengers as an inconvenience - but have the privilege of being able to charge higher-than-normal fare increases.

Both of these issues were exposed in the snow crisis last winter - the on-the-ground problems are well-known, while corporate PR gems included a spokeswoman being told by Nick Ferrari (an abrasive breakfast host on LBC radio) to go away and come back when she knew what she was talking about.

A lot of staff have been shed at Southeastern since it took over from the old SET, meaning its ability to respond to issues has depended on unreliable automated systems which have failed passengers countless times. For example, its website boasts of a "good service" on lines which are actually closed for engineering work.

But there's other issues at a corporate level too, the way it tried to hide service *cuts* at London stations during the Olympics (try finding info about that on its website), and the mystery of why so many metro trains were short-formed for months during the summer - apparently due to the fitting of deicing equipment, but Southeastern never thought to actually tell its passengers this. When there's good news to tell passengers, it either hides behind faceless "spokesmen" (see press release on its website about cheaper autumn fares) or doesn't even bother telling people (like when the Greenwich line went 6tph a couple of years ago).

Southeastern suffer from the same issues as other TOCs, but cop such abuse because its communications are so inept. The Twitter hashtag does attract some idiots who dish out personal abuse to individual staff, but it grew to share info about cancellations and other problems which SE simply wasn't telling its passengers about.

(The *really* baffling thing is how SE refuses to touch social media and has this high-handed attitude to passengers, while London Midland has a highly-rated Twitter team and Southern run amusing, imaginative ads to promote themselves.)

 

[Bungle73]

The *really* baffling thing is how SE refuses to touch social media

They have a Twitter feed.

 

[TrenHotel]

They don't - there's one run by National Rail Enquiries, and another one which spouts automated guff from its JourneyCheck feed, even during times of disruption.

There's no dedicated Southeastern Twitter feed run and properly staffed by the company comparable to, say, London Midland's.

There's a difference between using social media to talk *at* people - as these feeds run on SE's behalf do, and using it to talk *with* people and listen to them, as London Midland's does.

 

[Greeby]

They don't - there's one run by National Rail Enquiries, and another one which spouts automated guff from its JourneyCheck feed, even during times of disruption.

There's no dedicated Southeastern Twitter feed run and properly staffed by the company comparable to, say, London Midland's.

Probably the only time "London Midland" and "properly staffed" can be put in the same sentence with a straight face

 

[TheJRB]

I like Southeastern from what I've seen and experienced (mostly off peak). I think, as has already been stated in this thread, their fleet is one of the newest of all TOCs with the oldest trains only twenty years old (which themselves have been refurbished) since the withdrawal of the 508s. Most of the problems people experience are because of factors beyond the control of a TOC (weather, vandalism and so forth) or in places Network Rail. The HS1 services extend a long way into Kent, even if they are regular speed east of Ebbsfleet for north Kent and east of Ashford for the coast.

It's just another one of these things that we see in society where people feel it's a given that everything will work exactly as they want and get them where they want to be as fast as possible (hence why there's some bad driving on the roads), blaming the TOC even though they probably couldn't do any better if they were operating the network! That's not to say that SE (or any other TOC for that matter) are innocent all of the time.

Please excuse me for the rant, but I do feel that SE get a lot more bad publicity than is really necessary.

 

[CompactDstrxion]

To further disenfranchise the 'your local service is the worst one' theory, depending on where I am my local franchise is either Scotrail, Northern, or Transpennine Express. Yet I utterly despise CrossCountry above all of these.

 

[SouthEastern-465]

I like Southeastern from what I've seen and experienced (mostly off peak). I think, as has already been stated in this thread, their fleet is one of the newest of all TOCs with the oldest trains only twenty years old (which themselves have been refurbished) since the withdrawal of the 508s. Most of the problems people experience are because of factors beyond the control of a TOC (weather, vandalism and so forth) or in places Network Rail. The HS1 services extend a long way into Kent, even if they are regular speed east of Ebbsfleet for north Kent and east of Ashford for the coast.

It's just another one of these things that we see in society where people feel it's a given that everything will work exactly as they want and get them where they want to be as fast as possible (hence why there's some bad driving on the roads), blaming the TOC even though they probably couldn't do any better if they were operating the network! That's not to say that SE (or any other TOC for that matter) are innocent all of the time.

Please excuse me for the rant, but I do feel that SE get a lot more bad publicity than is really necessary.

Completely agree.

 

[HH]

I can't speak for SouthEastern services directly, but the best comparison should be against what they were like under SET (with the exception of Javelins of course).

On that basis NXEA have been a disaster. Here's a few issues that I'm aware of (people who work there could come up with more I'm sure):

1. No mainline trains have had an internal refresh over the length of the franchise (I don't know about the inners). The windows on 321s are disgusting too.
2. Ticket Office staffing has been slashed. Multi-window TOs have not only less windows open than they used to, they close earlier too.
3. Revenue Protection has got worse and worse. Outside Liv St Gates I haven't seen an RPI in over 6 months.
4. Some stations (maybe all?) haven't been painted from the start of the Franchise until now. I'm guessing it's being done this way to minimise the dilapidations they pay to NR.
5. Train dispatch at Liv St, once Bob Breakwell's pride and joy (at least the GE bit), is lackadaisical and frequently minutes late for no reason. Anyone who understands the evening peak will realise that this guarantees every train will be late running.
6. IR, at least with drivers, has been a disaster. Again they've gone significantly backwards from prior. Customers have been put through unnecessary disruption.

 

[PR1Berske]

To answer the question, "Yes, Northern Rail"

 

[IanXC]

If the national media was based in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds or Preston I imagine we'd have regular stories about Pacers and complaining about a lack of carriages on TPE.

Who wants a bet on how long it is before a TPE or Northern service appears on BBC Breakfast after April 2012?

 

[Tomonthetrain]

They don't - there's one run by National Rail Enquiries, and another one which spouts automated guff from its JourneyCheck feed, even during times of disruption.

There's no dedicated Southeastern Twitter feed run and properly staffed by the company comparable to, say, London Midland's.

Probably the only time "London Midland" and "properly staffed" can be put in the same sentence with a straight face

Only 1 line that's properly staffed on LM - the stourbridge town branch - and that's run by contractors!