Request to discuss London Midland Complaint by phone

[gray1404]

In April a friend of mine was left stranded in the early hours at Liverpool Lime Street. This was due to the cancellation of a LM train when he was traveling between Birmingham New Street and Formby. He was promised a taxi when the guard spoke to LM control but this failed to materialise.

Following several contacts with LM they eventually paid his delay repay and raised a cheque for a cost of the taxi. However, he feels there are some outstanding issues which I shall detail below with his permission. As customer relations failed to address these he asked for the case to be looked at again by a Manager.

- Failed to provide him with an explanation as to why I was left stranded on arrival at Liverpool Lime Street.

- He emailed Network Rail about this matter as they are the company who run Liverpool Lime Street. When they replied they advised that Northern would be the company who, having a member of staff on duty 24 hours at that location, would be responsible to assist stranded passengers.

- He contacted Northern who said: "It is the responsibility of London Midland to ensure that passengers can complete their journey because of disruption caused by them."

- LM first sent the letter to friend to the wrong address, his old address, even though he put his new address on the delay repay form. They totally ignored the fact he had to pay for a taxi in their first reply and enclosed RTVs for a delay, even though he'd requested a cheque (over £30 in line with their passengers charter)

- Several more phone calls had to be made to LM following up this matter.

- failure to address any of the detailed points he made in the detailed complaint sent with the delay repay form.

- he has asked what measures they have put in place to make sure this doesn't happen again. i.e. passengers been left stranded at LIV.

In the letter sent with the cheque it was stated: "...although it is prudent for me to point out that the latter [taxi fare] would ordinarily be deemed as a consequential loss, which a train company would not ordinarily refund."

This is unacceptable given the contract formed under the National Rail Conditions of Carriage (NRCoC) states that train companies are to assist customers who are left stranded when it is reasonable for them to do so. He therefore asked why they have classed this as a consequential and what steps he should take in future to avoid such when travelling on their services.

This was all sent a month ago and no reply received until he queried the matter on the LM Twitter.

He has just emailed me today (he's currently away) to say that he has received an email from a Supervisor asking if he could give him a call to discuss the matter. My friend has asked for my take on the matter.

I am not sure if I should tell him that it is no problem for him to have a phone call (although difficult as he's away on business right now abroad) or do insist that, given he's written a detailed letter, to insist on a written reply and maybe invite the person to email him if they have any questions or with to clarify anything.

Or should I tell him to take the matter to Transport Focus already and offer to help him complete the online form?

 

[Agent_c]

LM are still dealing with it, no need to go to focus yet.

I would say take the call, and record it. Ensure the caller knows its going to be recorded (its polite and I think a legal requirement).

If LM are doing the right thing, he gets a speedy resolution (well, no further delay at least). If they're doing the wrong thing you've got evidence..

If there's a misunderstanding, it is usually much easier to fix that up over the phone.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

. . . . I would say take the call, and record it. Ensure the caller knows its going to be recorded (its polite and I think a legal requirement).

It is polite.
It is not a legal requirement. It is the subsequent use of unapproved recordings which is very likely to carry obligations and/or liabilities and/or restrictions.

 

[Coolzac]

- He emailed Network Rail about this matter as they are the company who run Liverpool Lime Street. When they replied they advised that Northern would be the company who, having a member of staff on duty 24 hours at that location, would be responsible to assist stranded passengers.

- He contacted Northern who said: "It is the responsibility of London Midland to ensure that passengers can complete their journey because of disruption caused by them."

-

Here is an example of where I can find our railway network extremely frustrating. Everyone passing the buck to everyone else and the passenger suffers. There have been many occasions where I have been directed in circles by railway staff. I wish members of staff would 'take ownership' of such cases and directly help the passenger (even if this help involves contacting another company) rather than simply passing them off to someone else!

 

[Mag_seven]

Here is an example of where I can find our railway network extremely frustrating. Everyone passing the buck to everyone else and the passenger suffers. There have been many occasions where I have been directed in circles by railway staff. I wish members of staff would 'take ownership' of such cases and directly help the passenger (even if this help involves contacting another company) rather than simply passing them off to someone else!

Well what do you expect when you break up a single entity into lots of different bits. Under BR the taxi would have been provided with no buck passing, in fact a special train might even have been put on.

 

[Bletchleyite]

- He contacted Northern who said: "It is the responsibility of London Midland to ensure that passengers can complete their journey because of disruption caused by them."

This is false - the NRCoC requires any TOC to assist if reasonably possible:

43. Help from Train Companies if you are stranded
If disruption caused by circumstances within the control of a Train Company or a Rail
Service Company leaves you stranded before you have reached your destination printed
on or stored on your ticket, and the Train Company whose trains you are entitled to use
is unable to get you to that destination by other means, any Train Company which is in a
position to help will, if it reasonably can, either arrange to get you to that destination, or
provide overnight accommodation for you.

Though notably it doesn't seem to handle the situation of a split ticket if you read it literally. And it's not unreasonable that Northern might be sick of dealing with the reliability problem of the LM Liverpool-Brum service, which seems to suffer very frequent cancellations.

 

[Aeion]

I do feel that staff at Liverpool lime Street station or trying to absolve themselves of any responsibility. It is standard practice that once a taxi has been agreed with Control then the standard passenger is to make contact with a member of staff at That final destination who will guide them to the awaiting taxi. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. One reason why a passengers taxi is not usually covered over a railway organised one is that only specific taxi companies work for railway tics and they eork on tick billing the you at the end of the month. Standard taxis charge a lot more that railway ones I believe. Saying that I do believe that your friend was just unlucky. Saying that getting a response once your main complaint has been dealt with is always a chore, it's good that your friend got all that was rightfully owed to him

 

[OffertonBlue]

I have an outstanding complaint against Northern Rail which contains numerous complaints, requests for clarifications and a specific complaint against a member of staff for being rude and aggressive. After 27 days of no reply, I called to ask for an update to be told that the "case had been closed". This had been done with zero consultation/contact with myself and with complete disregard for my request for 3 separate clarifications.

I have asked directly how to escalate my complaint and even had a thread on here asking how to escalate a complain against Northern Rail. This was purportedly responded to by a Josh Raven, Head of Customer Experience, Northern Rail (I can not verify this person or his position), who wrote "OffertonBlue - You are welcome, one of the team will be in touch tomorrow". Of course they have not been in touch. Trying to find email/phone numbers is nigh on impossible. Its a very weird frustrating system.

 

[Coolzac]

43. Help from Train Companies if you are stranded
If disruption caused by circumstances within the control of a Train Company or a Rail Service Company leaves you stranded before you have reached your destination printed on or stored on your ticket, and the Train Company whose trains you are entitled to use is unable to get you to that destination by other means, any Train Company which is in a position to help will, if it reasonably can, either arrange to get you to that destination, or provide overnight accommodation for you.

Thank you for pointing this out. I must print this off and take it with me the next time I do a long journey by train! Does anyone else feel that TOC's ignore this part of the NRCoC?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Thank you for pointing this out. I must print this off and take it with me the next time I do a long journey by train! Does anyone else feel that TOC's ignore this part of the NRCoC?

It certainly seems common. However, if I'm remembering right, the original poster's issue involved a split ticket, and the literal reading of this condition doesn't seem to handle splits, i.e. the obligation would run out at the destination of the first ticket.

 

[DaleCooper]

I have an outstanding complaint against Northern Rail which contains numerous complaints, requests for clarifications and a specific complaint against a member of staff for being rude and aggressive. After 27 days of no reply, I called to ask for an update to be told that the "case had been closed". This had been done with zero consultation/contact with myself and with complete disregard for my request for 3 separate clarifications.

I have asked directly how to escalate my complaint and even had a thread on here asking how to escalate a complain against Northern Rail. This was purportedly responded to by a Josh Raven, Head of Customer Experience, Northern Rail (I can not verify this person or his position), who wrote "OffertonBlue - You are welcome, one of the team will be in touch tomorrow". Of course they have not been in touch. Trying to find email/phone numbers is nigh on impossible. Its a very weird frustrating system.

As Josh Raven is a member you could send a pm. I googled the name and it appears there is someone of that name at Northern Rail

He is also on Twitter @JoshyRaven

 

[gray1404]

Just to confirm, my friend was NOT traveling on a split ticket. He had one direct ticket Birmingham Stations to Formby.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Just to confirm, my friend was NOT traveling on a split ticket. He had one direct ticket Birmingham Stations to Formby.

My apologies, I'm confusing your incident with an almost identical one that was posted here recently which involved the onward travel from Lime St being on a Merseytravel pass of some kind. Makes it all the worse as we now know it is happening repeatedly.

In that case there is no excuse for your friend having been abandoned whatsoever (though I think that NRCoC line should be modified to allow splits by using the term "journey" instead of "ticket").

 

[gray1404]

My apologies, I'm confusing your incident with an almost identical one that was posted here recently which involved the onward travel from Lime St being on a Merseytravel pass of some kind. Makes it all the worse as we now know it is happening repeatedly.

In that case there is no excuse for your friend having been abandoned whatsoever (though I think that NRCoC line should be modified to allow splits by using the term "journey" instead of "ticket").

That was also one of mine in which I was using a SN&LM Advance combined with a Merseytravel Pass, splitting at Liverpool South Parkway connecting with the Southport train. I would say though that even when splitting tickets, as its allowed by the NRCoC then you are also entitled to the same protection and assistance when you are stranded, even when you are using a combination of tickets. I do not think there is any legal basis for a TOC to deny a customer of assistance when they are stranded/not to allow them onto the next train just because they are using a combination of tickets.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That was also one of mine in which I was using a SN&LM Advance combined with a Merseytravel Pass, splitting at Liverpool South Parkway connecting with the Southport train. I would say though that even when splitting tickets, as its allowed by the NRCoC then you are also entitled to the same protection and assistance when you are stranded, even when you are using a combination of tickets. I do not think there is any legal basis for a TOC to deny a customer of assistance when they are stranded/not to allow them onto the next train just because they are using a combination of tickets.

I would agree with you in principle, but the precise wording of the NRCoC entry quoted above would seem, on the face of it, to disagree, as it refers to the ticket, not the journey as referred to in other documentation.

This needs changing.

 

[gray1404]

Yet the same document allows customers to actually split tickets. At the same time it does not expressly state that you loose any of the rights in the NRCoC you acquire as a customer just because you split your tickets. Perhaps someone in the legal know from a contract law prospective could advise on this.....

 

[SickyNicky]

The actual wording is;

... leaves you stranded before you have reached your destination printed on or stored on your ticket ...

You may use two or more tickets for one journey ...

Taking the two together, I am happy to interpret section 43 to mean the destination printed on your final ticket, i.e. your final destination. I suspect that we (TrainSplit) would react robustly if any customers were stranded as a direct result of using split tickets. It has not happened as yet, nor would I expect it to.

It is, however, alarming that some train companies appear to not be taking seriously their responsibilities under section 43, regardless of the ticket(s) held. Although the system does seem to work in the vast majority of cases, it only takes one incident where it doesn't to bring the whole industry into disrepute. Were that to involve a vulnerable person, I shudder to think of the possible consequences.

 

[gray1404]

Back on topic on this one, my friend emailed me today as he's still away. He said that he has relied to London Midland saying that it would be difficult for him to take a call as he's abroad on business. However, he's invited them to email him any questions/points that need to be confirmed so he can provide such, before their Supervisor gives their full reply.

This sounds reasonable and hopefully will mean he'll get a reply sooner. Waiting for him to return from abroad would just drag it out. Also, I saw the email he sent he explaining why he was unhappy. It was very clear and he set out the specific questions he'd like answering, along with his justification for being unhappy. I guess if it does end up going to Passenger Focus it is better too that there is a written record of what has been said (rather then relying on quoting from phone conversations.)

Hopefully he'll hear back soon.

 

[185]

Crosscountry did this some time ago, dumping passengers at Manchester Piccadilly. As a member of staff for another TOC, I was the last TOC employee on duty on the station on Xmas Eve (albeit I had actually finished, bit delayed).

I rang XC control who were 1. reluctant to answer the phone and 2. reluctant to deal with the issue. I then called my own control who were similarly not bothered as it was 'nothing to do with us, just go home, it's XCs problem'. Only on my second call to XC control did they finally order 2 taxis for the Leeds passengers, 1 to Wigan, 1 to Preston and another to Rochdale.

Surely the TM onboard the XC train should have pre arranged it, and if not why not Northern's station staff? - Well their staff were paid up to 2200 so they went home - not their fault, useless Northern management to blame for cutting corners. The XC TM had not been out the cab, perhaps being Xmas Eve. Begs the question, if a train has a heavy delay with missed connections, why stay in the cab?