Caledonian Sleeper

TimboM said:

A unit of 8 coaches has been based at Inverness this last week for testing/training. Mk3s/Mk2s this evening and for the time being.

When the Mk5s do launch on the Highlander the current plan is to introduce them northbound one night then southbound the next, as far easier to swap the sets over in one go at Wembley than when it’s split across Inverness, Aberdeen and Fort William.

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Do we know yet if the introduction date will slip, there must be a whole lot of bookings in the summer peak in the new berths

31160 said:

Do we know yet if the introduction date will slip, there must be a whole lot of bookings in the summer peak in the new berths

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The last I heard it will switch over northbound on the 7th and southbound on the 8th of July. As this date is getting nearer I would have thought that if it changed now it would be a last minute change but I may be wrong.

Mainliner said:

Hotels on flat wheels?

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Seems Dutch railways have this sorted (credit to Youtube)

Another piece of bad publicity for CS:
Dinner on luxury Caledonian Sleeper train just snacks and juice on trolley, according to Perthshire couple
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/...errer=https://www.google.com&amp_tf=From %1$s

As an exiled Aberfeldian I'm intrigued as to why they went to Fort William rather than Pitlochry or Perth.

Richard P said:

Another piece of bad publicity for CS:
Dinner on luxury Caledonian Sleeper train just snacks and juice on trolley, according to Perthshire couple
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/dinner-luxury-caledonian-sleeper-train-16516839.amp#referrer=https://www.google.com&amp_tf=From %1$s

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The link's already in #2256 on this thread, so it's the same piece of bad publicity!

Mainliner said:

Absolutely, and my impression is that the whole operation, from the top down, hasn’t grasped the change of mindset that is necessary when promising a “hotel on wheels” at the prices now being charged.

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Indeed. Twice in my life a hotel at which I had booked a room could not honour the booking. In the first case (double booking) the receptionist called another hotel (4* rather than the 3* booked), arranged a room and gave me the money to pay for it. In the second the driver meeting me at the airport explained that the hotel had suffered a water leak and he would therefore take me to another hotel (again of a higher status - 4* rather than 4*garni) arranged for me.

Few people would consider an overnight coach to be a suitable replacement for a "hotel on wheels", especially those who booked on the basis of the "luxury" offer touted by CS.

DuncanS said:

As an exiled Aberfeldian I'm intrigued as to why they went to Fort William rather than Pitlochry or Perth.

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That I don’t understand either, unless they picked up the Fort William Sleeper at one of the West Highland stations in West Perthshire, which are reasonably close to Aberfeldy, like Rannoch or maybe Crianlarich, which is quite close to Aberfeldy if you come down through Killin? Still nowhere near as close as Pitlochry or Dunkeld on the HML though. Did they want to couple their sleeper trip with a trip on the West Highland Line maybe?

At the end of the day, as irksome as it is, unreliability of on-train catering, even on the sleeper, is nothing new, and is perhaps the lesser of CS’ worries given the service’s other problems at the moment. There were plenty of times in the later First Group era when there was no catering due to Mk2s failing and/or staff shortages. CS could admittedly be much better at giving advance warning of inability to provide a full catering service, so that prospective passengers can make alternative arrangements. That said, if a Mk2 fails just as boarding starts (as happened to me once at Inverness), or one of the rostered crew fails to book on, what can CS really do other than apologise and offer vouchers?

sheff1 said:

Indeed. Twice in my life a hotel at which I had booked a room could not honour the booking. In the first case (double booking) the receptionist called another hotel (4* rather than the 3* booked), arranged a room and gave me the money to pay for it. In the second the driver meeting me at the airport explained that the hotel had suffered a water leak and he would therefore take me to another hotel (again of a higher status - 4* rather than 4*garni) arranged for me.

Few people would consider an overnight coach to be a suitable replacement for a "hotel on wheels", especially those who booked on the basis of the "luxury" offer touted by CS.

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Valid point, but there's no other equivalent/better overnight sleeper service CS can put passengers on.

sheff1 said:

Few people would consider an overnight coach to be a suitable replacement for a "hotel on wheels", especially those who booked on the basis of the "luxury" offer touted by CS.

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More fundamentally, no-one arriving at a fairly expensive hotel at the advertised check-in time and being told that their room wasn’t ready would find it acceptable to be told to wait outside the hotel for a couple of hours, and if they needed refreshments or toilet facilities to go two blocks down the road to another hotel, which is the equivalent of what has happened to many CS customers recently.

TimboM said:

Valid point, but there's no other equivalent/better overnight sleeper service CS can put passengers on.

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But if the service is cancelled they could give the option of a hotel in London, Edinburgh...for the night and then a day train in the morning. At least then you should get a good nights sleep.

VT 390 said:

But if the service is cancelled they could give the option of a hotel in London, Edinburgh...for the night and then a day train in the morning. At least then you should get a good nights sleep.

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Passengers are being offered full refunds so they can do this if they wish - and make alternative arrangements to suit their own individual preference of when to travel, how and when/where to stay - of which there are multiple options.

TimboM said:

Passengers are being offered full refunds so they can do this if they wish - and make alternative arrangements to suit their own individual preference of when to travel, how and when/where to stay - of which there are multiple options.

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I think the point Sheff1 was making was that in his or her case the service providers recognised their obligations, made the necessary arrangements of a better standard and provided the money to pay for them.

Being told that a refund will be processed in due course, and leaving the customer to pull out funds upfront, find somewhere to stay at midnight and arrange rail travel the next day themselves is a rather different matter.

One would not be surprised to find this response in the event of something like a cancelled £20 low cost flight, but in that scenario one knows what one is paying for and accepts such risks, but it’s very different when paying premium rates for an advertised premium service.

TimboM said:

Passengers are being offered full refunds so they can do this if they wish - and make alternative arrangements to suit their own individual preference of when to travel, how and when/where to stay - of which there are multiple options.

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Oh? I got to Inverness having booked the sleeper to be somewhere south of the border by tomorrow morning, but it doesn't run. How am I supposed find a bed for tonight? This is late afternoon / early evening!

TimboM said:

Passengers are being offered full refunds so they can do this if they wish - and make alternative arrangements to suit their own individual preference of when to travel, how and when/where to stay - of which there are multiple options.

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I do accept this point however if you have booked to go on the sleeper and then have to find yourself accommodation as well as arriving late to your destination your trip could already be ruined so you should not have to spend extra on alternative accommodation or transport whether you get a refund or not.

Well, the ToC should arrange it all!

TimboM said:

Passengers are being offered full refunds so they can do this if they wish - and make alternative arrangements to suit their own individual preference of when to travel, how and when/where to stay - of which there are multiple options.

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I don’t think that works, does it? Giving a refund but making people pay for hotel and day train , which would be exorbitant at such short notice. I think it needs to be a refund plus some sort of extra voucher. Passengers mustnt lose out if the sleeper company are serious about running this

Richard P said:

Another piece of bad publicity for CS:
Dinner on luxury Caledonian Sleeper train just snacks and juice on trolley, according to Perthshire couple
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/dinner-luxury-caledonian-sleeper-train-16516839.amp#referrer=https://www.google.com&amp_tf=From %1$s

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Perhaps I'm missing something, but the new coaches aren't on the Highlander yet.

Were they meant to be by now? But even if not, I find it hard to believe they weren't informed that it would be the old stock.

Mainliner said:

I think the point Sheff1 was making was that in his or her case the service providers recognised their obligations, made the necessary arrangements of a better standard and provided the money to pay for them.

Being told that a refund will be processed in due course, and leaving the customer to pull out funds upfront, find somewhere to stay at midnight and arrange rail travel the next day themselves is a rather different matter.

One would not be surprised to find this response in the event of something like a cancelled £20 low cost flight, but in that scenario one knows what one is paying for and accepts such risks, but it’s very different when paying premium rates for an advertised premium service.

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Yes, that fully explains the point I was seeking to make.

I also think your point about being told to wait outside/go down the road if a hotel room is not ready is exactly right - no quality hotel (which is what CS are comparing themselves to) would act in that way, whereas a budget B&B might well do and punters would not be surprised.

marks87 said:

Perhaps I'm missing something, but the new coaches aren't on the Highlander yet.

Were they meant to be by now? But even if not, I find it hard to believe they weren't informed that it would be the old stock.

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Well, the article quotes the chap as saying “no-one told us the double bed berths were not part of the service that night”, and it also says “The PA approached Serco for comment but it had not done so by the time we went to press.”...!

marks87 said:

Perhaps I'm missing something, but the new coaches aren't on the Highlander yet.

Were they meant to be by now? But even if not, I find it hard to believe they weren't informed that it would be the old stock.

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The Highlander was supposed to switch to the new stock from 2nd June northbound 3rd southbound before CS were forced to delay until July. Many customers myself included did not receive any email from CS advising of the delay.

marks87 said:

Perhaps I'm missing something, but the new coaches aren't on the Highlander yet.

Were they meant to be by now? But even if not, I find it hard to believe they weren't informed that it would be the old stock.

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There was no dining service. Shouldn't make a difference on the old stock or the new one?

Any news on tonight’s southbound lowlander? Doesn’t look like the stock for either the Glasgow portion or the Edinburgh portion has left Polmadie yet according to RTT. Booked Edinburgh to Euston, and just wondering if it’s worthwhile leaving home to loiter in the lounge.

I'd sort of assumed that the view of the service we have on a 'crank board' such as this is rather different to what filters out to the general public, which I'm sure it is, but I was interested this afternoon to speak to a friend who booked two guests onto the sleeper (Highlander) in a couple of weeks' time. She's spent around £500 to do this - it's a bit of a treat for the two people travelling - but is a bit concerned about what they are actually going to get. Firstly, the initial booking was done on the assumption that it would be on the new stock (that's what they looked at photos of together, on the website). Secondly, when she herself last travelled, with a ticket for the seats, the coach was out of order and she had to go all the way by bus instead, so she's a bit worried that this is what's going to happen to her friends if there's a problem, and her perception is that there are often problems at the moment (based on recent trips on the old stock). Thirdly, she was aware of the 'square wheels' issue from the other night (I'm not sure if that was from the general media or CS website). This shows a couple of things - one is that CS's marketing of the new stock was successful in as far as making people aware that it was coming - another is how a perception of unreliability can arise, and another is that lay people might be a bit more aware of ongoing problems than we might assume. CS has definitely got a bit of a problem for itself, having got everyone's attention with the new trains, but unfortunately at a time when really it would be better if people were looking the other way.

Having said all that - someone asked, why not just get them tickets on the plane? The answer was, that because of where they need to end up, even if the plane might be cheaper, the logistics of organising it all, and the time she'd have to spend doing it, mean that she'd ruled it out as an option. So in spite of all the worries about the current reliability of the service, an indication that people *do* recognise that an overnight service can offer certain things that cheap flights can't, at least to certain destinations, and it's not all about price. That doesn't mean that pricing people off the service isn't a danger but it is the case that simply comparing the cost of sleeper vs. cost of flight+bed cam easily miss the point of what's actually involved in the decision.

sheff1 said:

Indeed. Twice in my life a hotel at which I had booked a room could not honour the booking. In the first case (double booking) the receptionist called another hotel (4* rather than the 3* booked), arranged a room and gave me the money to pay for it. In the second the driver meeting me at the airport explained that the hotel had suffered a water leak and he would therefore take me to another hotel (again of a higher status - 4* rather than 4*garni) arranged for me.

Few people would consider an overnight coach to be a suitable replacement for a "hotel on wheels", especially those who booked on the basis of the "luxury" offer touted by CS.

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Other than for the seats (for which it probably is a fair replacement) I agree. Passengers shouldn't be chucked a refund and told to go away. They should be told which decent quality hotel their room has been reserved in (having been asked if they'd prefer it at their origin or their destination), and asked on which train they would like a First Class reserved seat, or if they'd prefer a flight, again at CS's cost.

Other TOCs might not be happy to provide free acceptance, but I'm sure they will be quite happy if CS rock up with the corporate credit card and ask for a stack of First Anytime Singles.

Regardless of the stock issue, this is all more Travelodge on wheels than decent hotel - but not at Travelodge prices.

Serco are losing tens of millions - the reality is they are going to offer the bare minimum and not all manner of things over and above the bare minimum.

bravesirrobin said:

Any news on tonight’s southbound lowlander? Doesn’t look like the stock for either the Glasgow portion or the Edinburgh portion has left Polmadie yet according to RTT. Booked Edinburgh to Euston, and just wondering if it’s worthwhile leaving home to loiter in the lounge.

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Both Glasgow and Edinburgh stock have now left Polmadie (70 late and 23 late respectively). I believe there was a fatality earlier at Newton which may have delayed the services leaving the depot.

TimboM said:

Serco are losing tens of millions - the reality is they are going to offer the bare minimum and not all manner of things over and above the bare minimum.

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They're going to lose even more if they keep screwing the passengers over. They are behaving rather like Ryanair - "naff off, your refund will be with you in a week". Not good enough.

TimboM said:

Serco are losing tens of millions - the reality is they are going to offer the bare minimum and not all manner of things over and above the bare minimum.

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In that case, they will soon learn another reality - that if they offer the bare minimum to people who have paid far more than the bare minimum, they will end up with no business.

DuncanS said:

As an exiled Aberfeldian I'm intrigued as to why they went to Fort William rather than Pitlochry or Perth.

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Probably need the haulage / or the track....