Bloody hell, I didn't mean to cause offense. It's not even my personal opinion; I made it clear above I don't really dislike the interior apart from the seats which I personally find very uncomfortable. When I read the DfT wanted to avoid GWR ordering something better than the 800s, that says to me that they saw them as "the foul language" I said.
Indeed, on the train the other day someone was annoyed with the (lack of) catering. It was rammed because of the Rugby. There was no trolley for us!
I thought I was rather tame, I wasn't even trying to insult the trains! It's just how it came across!
I've used the IETs a lot now. Your comments from a passenger point of view were entirely reasonable for something that cost so much to build and costs so much to use, so I thought that criticism of the use of the word in question betrayed a defensiveness.
Moving on from that, my personal view now, having travelled regularly to and from Bristol, Oxford, Taunton and Newton Abbot over the past nine months or so, is that an IET in Standard Class serves my purposes better than an HST or, heaven forbid, a Turbo. Having a table to work at is my top priority and GWR HSTs were - latterly - a total disaster from that point of view. So I find the seats more comfortable overall.
The lighting isn't great but is better than the horrible glare of the HSTs.
Catering is a shambles, missing more often than not, but I think that's as much to do with the way GWR operates the trains. In all honesty I never went along to the buffet that much anyway.
My loud raspberry, if I'm allowed to use the word, is for First Class. I used to use this most of the time because HST Standard was so wretched. Now I can hardly see any difference between the two classes, but there's no evidence of GWR pricing accordingly, and they've always been dopey with their First Class pricing anyway. So I suppose you could say that's another win for the IETs - they're saving me, or my company, money.
So all in all, if I rated IET on comfort on my previous HST usage in First Class then they're a marked decline. But rated on value for money overall then I'm perfectly happy with them.
Just my personal views after 30 or so journeys mind.