POLL: Fare changes. Good or bad?

[digitaltoast]

UPDATE: I received a letter dated June 10th with the following:

Thank you for your further letter about the re-structure of our tickets.

I am sorry for the confusion we may have caused in our previous communications with you. Following your original phone calls and letters to us we had discovered some anomalies in our fare structure. This affected a few fares where connecting train operators were involved.

As a result, we have had twenty incidents of customers being charged incorrect fares.
These fares have now been corrected and if the customers contact us we will reimburse them. Regrettably as these purchases were made at stations we do not have the customers details to contact directly. We have also made the Telegraph aware of these fare anomalies and our efforts to correct the fault.

If you have purchased an incorrectly priced ticket please send it to us in customer relations and we will reimburse you for the difference in fares.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to address this matter once again.

Yours sincerely

VIC SAVILLE
Team Leader

TWENTY incidents?!? I spoke to ten people on trains myself! Don't tell me only 20 people went from the south to Wales (or any other combination of XC > non-XC) on advance tickets in that time! I particularly like:

Following your original phone calls and letters to us we had discovered some anomalies in our fare structure

Er, no...following my recording your lies, getting the press involved, then CC-ing the whole lot to Passenger Focus, ATOC and Mr Ruth Kelly, you had to stop lying. I TOLD them about the incorrect fares before the 18th May! The nerve of some of these companies....

And in spite of the line,

We have also made the Telegraph aware of these fare anomalies and our efforts to correct the fault

there's nothing on the Cross Country Trains or ATOC press release site, and nothing I can find in the Telegraph. There's a mention of the Passenger Focus statement, though:

Passenger Focus is lobbying Virgin Trains, Cross Country and National Express following changes in ticket use restrictions in some parts of the country.

(click link above to read the rest).

Anyway, I've updated the blog. But there you have it - time to get claiming!

 

[digitaltoast]

Another update - I now have a reply from passenger focus.
2 months to not read my letter properly! My point was that the fare had gone from £12 to £21, then after MANY hours of calling and harrasment, XC admitted a mistake and the £21 become £17.50. But I also pointed out that I now have to book A>B B>C to get the price of the old A>C fare, otherwise it's about £15 more! I also pointed out what a general nightmare the whole simplification thing was, and could we please have the old system back as I don't really want to pay nearly £1000 more a year for the new system. This was their reply:

Thank you for your complaint with Cross Country which we received in this office on 3 June. I have now had the opportunity to review your complaint.

I understand you are unhappy about the availability of the Value Advance fares on a number of your routes. I can understand your frustration as these fares do represent great value for money if you're able to get them.

With the advance fares, there is limited quota on some services and they are not a guaranteed fare. I'm aware that the quota does change depending on whether the service is busy and whether it's a peak time service or not. If it is a busy service, they are unlikely to offer advance fares as this could cause further problems like overcrowding.

Because the train companies advertise these fares as 'subject to availability' there are no ground in which we can enforce them to make more available. However, we are very much aware of the importance of these fares to passengers and the benefits they bring, considering the cost of a standard fare.

I would like to clarify that these fare increases are not due to the simplification of the fares. The train companies were due to review their fares and they have done this at the same time of the simplification. We did ask them not to do this as we knew it would cause confusion and discredit the whole simplification of fares process, which is something we have long campaigned for.

Thank you for your comments and I hope I have clarified our position on this.

Is that a toothless watchdog or what?!

 

[me123]

Sounds like an auto-response sent to a few people who've had similar issues. Certainly, the availablility of AP fares on XC has been a big issue recently.

 

[yorkie]

It is ironic that Passenger Focus campaigned for simplification yet many of us passengers are very concerned that the TOCs have used, and will again use, simplification as an excuse to put up fares and remove useful ticket types.

There are no reassurances that anyone will be ensuring that the TOCs do not cause people to lose out, and all the signs so far is that simplification is NOT making walk on fares simpler it is just changing a few names and withdrawing some useful fares.