Anyone else having trouble getting TOCs to respond to emails?

py_megapixel · 17 Jan 2020

A while ago, I emailed Northern about some problems I had while traveling with them. Shortly afterwards I received an automated response stating that they were reviewing my complaint and that they aim to respond in 10 working days, and that their policy is to respond within 20 working days.

After the 20 working day deadline, I sent another email to chase them, summarising my previous email and requesting them to review my complaint as soon as possible.

Several days later, I sent another email, asking them again to review my complaint.

It's now been over a week since the 20th working day after my email, and Northern are still ignoring me.

Anyone else having this issue with Northern or other TOCs?

RailUK Forums

bb21 · 17 Jan 2020

Depends on whether your complaint requires specialist input I would hazard a guess.

Some operators are pretty heavily snowed under in terms of workload, especially Northern I would imagine in some functions. It may be that customer relations are waiting on a response from the person(s) they referred the matter to. I know I am well over 2-3 months due on some time-consuming enquiries as I simply have not had the time to deal with them and the customers who are waiting on them simply have to wait until a point where I have the time to get to it. Alternatively it may have been that the matter was referred to more than one person across several functions and everyone thought someone else would reply. (Happened to me more than once.

)

Just a possible explanation. Bottom line is it is unlikely to have been ignored by customer relations. There is likely to be some other reasons holding it up. There is no harm giving them a nudge if it is overdue. They can then chase up relevant people again.

DarloRich · 17 Jan 2020

py_megapixel said:
A while ago, I emailed Northern about some problems I had while traveling with them. Shortly afterwards I received an automated response stating that they were reviewing my complaint and that they aim to respond in 10 working days, and that their policy is to respond within 20 working days.

After the 20 working day deadline, I sent another email to chase them, summarising my previous email and requesting them to review my complaint as soon as possible.

Several days later, I sent another email, asking them again to review my complaint.

It's now been over a week since the 20th working day after my email, and Northern are still ignoring me.

Anyone else having this issue with Northern or other TOCs?

they might simply be snowed under and under manned!

yorkie · 17 Jan 2020

py_megapixel said:
A while ago, I emailed Northern about some problems I had while traveling with them. Shortly afterwards I received an automated response stating that they were reviewing my complaint and that they aim to respond in 10 working days, and that their policy is to respond within 20 working days.

After the 20 working day deadline, I sent another email to chase them, summarising my previous email and requesting them to review my complaint as soon as possible.

Several days later, I sent another email, asking them again to review my complaint.

It's now been over a week since the 20th working day after my email, and Northern are still ignoring me.

Anyone else having this issue with Northern or other TOCs?

It can take many weeks to get a response from certain train companies.

Emailing them to chase it can drag your case back to the bottom of the queue, at LNER at least.

Belperpete · 17 Jan 2020

I recall a thread on here where it was said that with at least one TOC, every time you send an email, your query goes to the back of the queue again. So if you keep emailing, you never get an answer! Best to telephone if you have not had an answer.

tomwills98 · 17 Jan 2020

I can't imagine Northern keeping under a 20 working day time limit with what they are going through now, if you've had a case reference you will get a response, eventually....

Odd having new emails push the case to the back of the queue, with us they just get added to the case as long as the case ref is in the subject bar, or they get manually moved across with a couple of clicks.

py_megapixel · 17 Jan 2020

yorkie said:
It can take many weeks to get a response from certain train companies.

Emailing them to chase it can drag your case back to the bottom of the queue, at LNER at least.

Belperpete said:
I recall a thread on here where it was said that with at least one TOC, every time you send an email, your query goes to the back of the queue again. So if you keep emailing, you never get an answer! Best to telephone if you have not had an answer.

That's a terribly designed system. It sounds like something a primary school would put in place to stop students badgering the teachers!

sheff1 · 17 Jan 2020

If no reply is received after 40 working days complain to the Rail Ombudsman.

dk1 · 18 Jan 2020

sheff1 said:
If no reply is received after 40 working days complain to the Rail Ombudsman.

Or just give up.

dvboy · 18 Jan 2020

py_megapixel said:
That's a terribly designed system. It sounds like something a primary school would put in place to stop students badgering the teachers!

If they use sometime like Oracle CX then I completely understand how that can happen.

Jobs are dealt with in "last updated" order and chasing it up (or even an out-of-office reply) counts as an update as the system doesn't know if the incoming email is a reply with a genuine useful update or chase up.

The alternative is to have the jobs ordered by the time they were first opened. This is fine if dealing with a small queue of jobs but when there are potentially thousands of jobs it makes it almost impossible to make any progress down the list because you'd be always dealing with updates to older jobs that have been waiting for updates before brand new jobs.

Parallel · 19 Jan 2020

I’ve only contacted two TOCs within the last few years via e-mail or letter.

GWR didn’t reply to my letter, so I sent them an e-mail over a month later with basically with the same info on it (and politely letting them know I was looking for a reply) and got an automated response saying my e-mail has been received and nothing else. I wasn’t surprised from previous experience before so didn’t bother trying to chase it up again, (even though the complaint did at least warrant a response IMO)

TfW were excellent, they replied by letter about two weeks later.

No experience with Northern though but I imagine they’ve been dealing with a lot of complaints/queries recently, maybe it was overlooked.

DC2001 · 19 Jan 2020

py_megapixel said:
A while ago, I emailed Northern about some problems I had while traveling with them. Shortly afterwards I received an automated response stating that they were reviewing my complaint and that they aim to respond in 10 working days, and that their policy is to respond within 20 working days.

After the 20 working day deadline, I sent another email to chase them, summarising my previous email and requesting them to review my complaint as soon as possible.

Several days later, I sent another email, asking them again to review my complaint.

It's now been over a week since the 20th working day after my email, and Northern are still ignoring me.

Anyone else having this issue with Northern or other TOCs?

I generally find Northern take just over the 20 working days for an initial response but once an advisor has replied, it seems to get assigned to that advisor. When I then reply to their initial response, I usually get another response within a week assuming that they are in work.

The social media staff can chase up emails which haven't had a response if you explain that it is over the 20 working days period.

D365 · 19 Jan 2020

yorkie said:
It can take many weeks to get a response from certain train companies.

Emailing them to chase it can drag your case back to the bottom of the queue, at LNER at least.

That's the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title..!

dk1 said:
Or just give up.

When a delay compensation service is available, I think it's important to make good use of it

DC2001 said:
The social media staff can chase up emails which haven't had a response if you explain that it is over the 20 working days period.

I got in contact with LNER on Twitter recently with regards to a delay repay claim that was rejected (they claimed 29 minutes, the delay was 30 minutes). I don't think my case had reached 20 working days at that point, however, would it be worth trying again?

DC2001 · 19 Jan 2020

D365 said:
That's the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title..!

When a delay compensation service is available, I think it's important to make good use of it

I got in contact with LNER on Twitter recently with regards to a delay repay claim that was rejected (they claimed 29 minutes, the delay was 30 minutes). I don't think my case had reached 20 working days at that point, however, would it be worth trying again?

Is there an appeal link that you can use to have your claim reviewed again- if so I'd try this and explain in any text box they provide that the delay was actually 30 minutes (presumably you checked the time on the platform upon arrival or have some evidence of your train being 30 minutes).
If this isn't the case you could try emailing [email protected] and make a complaint about not being correctly compensated by their delay repay scheme - I'd definitely do this if they reject your appeal.

D365 · 19 Jan 2020

DC2001 said:
Is there an appeal link that you can use to have your claim reviewed again- if so I'd try this and explain in any text box they provide that the delay was actually 30 minutes (presumably you checked the time on the platform upon arrival or have some evidence of your train being 30 minutes).
If this isn't the case you could try emailing [email protected] and make a complaint about not being correctly compensated by their delay repay scheme - I'd definitely do this if they reject your appeal.

Yep, I've got screenshots of the train times from my delayed journey on 30th November. I made a complaint by email on 8th December, by replying to the automatic email that I received the same day. Normally a prod on Twitter seems to be enough to get the complaint followed through, but clearly something has changed.

DC2001 · 19 Jan 2020

D365 said:
Yep, I've got screenshots of the train times from my delayed journey on 30th November. I made a complaint by email on 8th December, by replying to the automatic email that I received the same day. Normally a prod on Twitter seems to be enough to get the complaint followed through, but clearly something has changed.

Was the email address you sent your reply to a monitored inbox? Sometimes delay repay emails come from 'No reply' inboxes so your email may never have reached them!

D365 · 19 Jan 2020

DC2001 said:
Was the email address you sent your reply to a monitored inbox? Sometimes delay repay emails come from 'No reply' inboxes so your email may never have reached them!

[email protected], which is the address I was given to reply to in the automated email.

DC2001 · 19 Jan 2020

D365 said:
[email protected], which is the address I was given to reply to in the automated email.

In which case you could try telephoning them on 03457 225 333 to check that they have received your email and hurry up your response. I have has issues with Northern and Transport for Wales where they have 'not received' emails which I sent to them before.

dk1 · 19 Jan 2020

D365 said:
When a delay compensation service is available, I think it's important to make good use of it

I read the original post as just being a complaint rather than compensation or delay repay.

Deepgreen · 19 Jan 2020

I get responses but they are invariably very poor and fail to address the points made because they are automatically-generated based on key words rather than being read properly by humans. The effort required to get the TOCs to respond meaningfully often makes me abandon the cause. The TOCs are really not interested in suggestions, or complaints that don't fall into the 'Delay Repay' category - they only understand monetary elements and compensation is seen as easier than getting things right in the first place. Suggestions for improvement are simply fobbed off as being passed on to management (never to be seen again).

I e-mail far less these days as it's simply not worth the effort to try to get things improved by those who are only interested in the bare minimum.

It's a stark contrast to, say, supermarkets, where a complaint e-mail is met with a response the next day which actually addresses the points made! Another example of why the rail sector is not a truly competitive privatisation model - the supermarkets are in genuine competition and respond to complaints accordingly; the TOCs are not, and don't.

TurbostarFan · 19 Jan 2020

Belperpete said:
I recall a thread on here where it was said that with at least one TOC, every time you send an email, your query goes to the back of the queue again. So if you keep emailing, you never get an answer! Best to telephone if you have not had an answer.

Correct, that's what I've been told by an LNER staff member I spoke to once.

py_megapixel said:
That's a terribly designed system. It sounds like something a primary school would put in place to stop students badgering the teachers!

The real purpose I think is to ensure that a new email results in the whole ticket being dealt with in the order of arrival of the last email sent, hence ensuring that this email is properly read and dealt with, whilst ensuring a fair response time for everyone. It's not ideal, but a lot of things aren't.

DarloRich · 20 Jan 2020

I write an actual letter. Never fails.

Beemax · 24 Jan 2020

Wrote to SWR Just before Christmas to claim a taxi fare due to being unable to otherwise get home due to a combination of strike, landslip and otherwise cancelled trains. Received a (satisfactory) response 17.20 on Saturday afternoon (four weeks after the event) , which gives the impression they're working hard to clear the backlog.

Anyone else having trouble getting TOCs to respond to emails?

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