the customer had been mistreated by a Virgin Trains Guard, who not only refused to honour the promise of affordably priced upgrades.
While I agree with you, the Guard didn't
have to honour anything.
1) Did the customer have proof the Ticket Office person advised her about the fare? Not saying she was a liar, not at all, but in this day and age, there are a whole load of liars there so having some sort of reference is better than not.
2) The Ticket Office person thought it was valid, the Guard decided it wasn't valid. Until a decision is made whether the fare is valid or not on that day, we'll never know who was in the right.
3) Even if the Ticket Office person mis-advised, the company has no legal obligation to allow the upgrade. If they did, surely I could board any train, sit in First Class and claim the Ticket Office person advised me I could upgrade for £1, therefore you must accept it.
The problem with Virgin Trains' social media is it doesn't quite know what it is.
Is it Marketing, or Customer Service. Hard to have both.
Marketing departments will bend over backwards to help customers - they're afraid of someone speaking bad of the company name. Customer Service departments will follow rules and guidelines when responding to a customer.
I can't speak for all TOCs and their structures, but Virgin's Twitter team comes under Marketing rather than Customer Service. It
was part of Customer Relations but was split in 2014 into it's own department, headed by a guy who had no/very little training in PR, Marketing or Social Media, whose manager is/was some sort of PA in Marketing.
Thus, you have kiddie responses - but that's the Virgin way. It's funny as I see East Midlands Trains trying to be the same, but a bit more rubbish.
Virgin Trains' social media guidelines stipulate(d)
ALL tweets
must be responded to. It gets tough on social media operatives when you get some moronic person who keeps going, even though they're trying to get something for nothing.
It's not easy as the social media team don't want to be hated by stations either.
Say if someone tweets they were disallowed into the First Class lounge because it was 5 hours until their train was due to depart. If the rules of the FC lounge say there's a 2 hour limit, then the social media operative either annoys the FC lounge people by over-riding their decision, or disappoints the customer, which could end up in a rubbish situation for them.
I'm all for a bit of a laid back approach but there are much better ways than Virgin's approach. I particularly found London Midlands feed hit a good level.
Indeed, it seems to be being overlooked that the passenger boarded a train at Edinburgh on a Bank Holiday.
Bank Holiday in Scotland perhaps, but not England.
This is the crook of the problem. I'd suggest though that as the train originated in Scotland, whatever holidays they're having should be honoured. If boarding in England, it's not recognised. Messy.
