A friend of mine has accidentally left an item on a Virgin Train.
He has rung VT, who advised him to call the station where the train terminates, which has a left luggage office provided by Excess Baggage.
This office is not answering their phone.
I have three questions:
- Is there any other way of advising the train manager / cleaning team / other responsible person to look out for this item?
- Looking at a poster from Excess Baggage, they mention a sliding scale for lost property charges, however these would seem to be at odds with the National Rail Conditions of Carriage (Section III, Para 56). What is the actual charge levied?
- Does anyone have any further advice?
This is of no use to you now;
generally if you realise you've left some property on a train and notice straight away then advise the station staff (if manned) and they will either call ahead to the next manned station to have a quick look for item or get in touch with the guard by getting a contact number from the TOCs control.
If you alight at an unmanned station then ring customer services number for the TOC you travelled with and they will usually ring the guard up and ask them to try and locate the item.
Can't speak for other TOCs but on XC the general policy is to hand lost property in at the terminating station for that service. This raises it's own problems. For instance a passenger traveling from Leicester to Nuneaton leaves an item behind. In theory it should be handed in at New street. However if the property is not discovered until the unit is working it's next service (Birmingham - Stansted) then the item will be handed in at Stansted.
Now the original passenger will not in a million years think to try and trace his property down at Stansted Airport. He/she would rightly expect it to be in either Leicester/Birmingham or Nuneaton.
Depending on how bored I am I sometimes try and reunite the owner with their property if it's easy to track them down. For example a mobile phone without a security lock, just ring the number saved under 'Home' or Ipod type devices just send a email to the Appstore account address.
In the cases of wallets etc if there are old train tickets inside then I try and hand it in at their home station if this is obvious from the previous journeys.
The railway does need a central database for lost property on a national scale. The way it stands at the moment it is extremely difficult to track down lost property as everyone seems to deal with it in their own way and each TOC has their own policy on how to deal with it.
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While I'm at it I will add; please people remember roughly where you were sat should you feel the need to try and track down some lost property. It absolutely ****es me off when I get a phone call asking me to try and look for something small like a phone or wallet on a train.
Me; Whereabouts was the passenger sat
Control; He said he was sat on the left hand side near the luggage racks, could not be any more specific.:roll:
So you then have to walk through every carriage looking under every seat to try and spot the item.
)