CallySleeperKid
Member
Not sure if this was the right place to put this, so mods feel free to move it if need be.
With the odd post cropping up recently about complaints and customer service, I thought id pop mine in here and see what you think and what I should consider doing next? Be warned though, it may take a bit of reading, but here goes.....
The following is a copy of the e-mail I sent to ScotRail customer services and explains what has happened and this will explain to you all what has happened in our case........
Hi,
Sorry this is going to be a bit long winded.
The original situation is that we have booked two trips on the Caledonian Sleeper,
03/12/09 London Euston – Fort William
06/12/09 Fort William – London Euston
We booked these tickets through the First ScotRail website on 02/10/09 and picked our tickets up from the ticket machines at Nottingham station on the same day. The tickets were booked with the use of a disabled adult railcard and the total cost was £331.20 each way, or £662.40 in total.
After telling a friend about this, we had a look at the bookings again and found that if you searched for the exact same tickets, same date, time and class, but WITHOUT using a disabled adult railcard that the price offered was £272.00 each way, a total of £544.00, a huge £117.60 cheaper than if you used the railcard! As you will no doubt know, you have to pay for a disabled adult railcard, which in turn should make your journeys cheaper, not more expensive.
I reported this to enquires and customer relations on 03/10/09 and got the following reply on 06/10/09.......
Thank you for your email dated 3 October 2009 in connection with your journeys between London Euston and Fort William in December.
I have looked at the cost of Sleeper First Singles, and these are £184.00 each without railcard discount and £165.60 with, so the total of £662.40 would appear correct. There is a cheaper Sleeper First Single at a cost of £136.00 without railcard discount and I can only recommend you contact web support regarding availability of the quota on 0845 3050250.
Thank you for contacting ScotRail. Should you need to reply to this email, please respond to [email protected].
Yours sincerely
Colin Powers
Customer Relations Advisor
I followed the instruction to contact web support, firstly on 06/10/09, I spoke to a woman who asked for various reference numbers and details about my journeys, she was unable to find my tickets after asking countless times if it was a bargain berth, even though I had stated the tickets were first sleeper single, and I was then was placed on hold for over 20 minutes, with no explanations as to why I was being held this long, before I hung up.
I tried again today (08/10/09) and firstly spoke to a man who seemed to have no idea what I was talking about, I was asked for no details about the my contact details, booking information or tickets, except the reference number for the FastTicket collection confirmation I had received, to which I was told quite bluntly that the reference is invalid, and that was the end of the conversation. The man I spoke to was pretty unhelpful and did not seem to know what my problem was.
I tried again and finally got through to a very helpful woman, who listened to the situation and checked through all the details I had given, she took my e-mail address and got my tickets up in a matter of seconds. She checked through my situation and found the problem straight away, stating that it was a website error and the £272.00 tickets should have shown up when searching with a disabled adult railcard, I was on hold for no more than a few minutes.
I was informed that the situation could only be rectified by cancelling my 2 booked trips and re-booking the new tickets at the cheaper price. This is all well and good but when I asked when the refund would be placed back into my account I was told I would have to mail the tickets I have back and a refund would be in my account by 28/10/09 at the earliest, providing I posted the tickets today. Sadly this situation is not really any help to us, firstly I do not have £544 spare in my account to book the new tickets now, and secondly I am not willing to wait until 28/10/09 to book new tickets because the sleeper to Fort William is only 2 coaches and we are risking not getting first class tickets, or any tickets at all, especially as it is only just over a month before we travel. We have several other journeys booked as part of this trip and to not be able to get the Caledonain Sleeper tickets we want would flush another £500 down the toilet.
On a side note with first class booking, When we made our original booking for the London Euston to Fort William we had to add 4 separate booking to the basket before we got a shared cabin (next to each other with connecting door), even though we stated each time that we wanted a shared cabin. We were given berth numbers at opposite ends of the carriage so we had to add the tickets and then remove the ones we didn’t want when we had a shared cabin.
So in review, we have had to spend almost £120 over the odds due to a website error not giving the full range of tickets to disabled adult railcard holders, along with having to make three phone calls to an 0845 number, on two occasions the operative seemed to not have the knowledge about the tickets to rectify the problem.
I am a huge fan of ScotRail, the service onboard is always clean and the staff are friendly, I think the Caledonain Sleeper service is the most beautiful journey in the UK and I would recommend it to anyone, but this situation has let us both down and we still have a return journey to Mallaig to book for 05/12/09 yet!
I doubt very much anything can be done in our situation now but I hope that the website issue can be addressed so this does not happen to anyone else, after all, you pay for your railcard to get the reduced fares, not pay more and £120 is still £120 to anyone.
Thanks
The reply I have had from ScotRail is as follows....................
Thank you for your further email dated 8 October 2009 following previous correspondence with our office. I was most concerned to learn of the difficulties you have experienced, and I am sorry that you have found cause to complain.
I will certainly log your comments for the attention of the Web Support Team Manager as we view the failure to provide any aspect of our advertised service with the greatest concern. The online booking service was launched to enable us to offer a more useful and efficient service, and I apologise that we let you down on this occasion.
We also offer a telephone booking service, which is available to sell most types of ticket, including those available through our website. If you would prefer to contact our Telesales department to make your reservation, please call 08457 55 00 33. If you are booking from outside the UK, please call our International Telesales on 0044 1752 675 670.
All our fares are sold subject to availability and are quota controlled. I would therefore suggest that in future you search for both fares with and without the railcard discount.
Your comments regarding displaying all fares with and without railcard discount have been logged for the attention of the web support managers, and ScotRail will be reviewing all customer feedback on a regular basis, to allow us to identify any areas where there is a clear need for improvement.
Thank you for contacting ScotRail. I am grateful to you for bringing this matter to my attention.
Should you need to reply to this email, please respond to [email protected].
Yours sincerely
Janine Smith
Customer Relations Advisor
So basically I have to search for all our advanced booking tickets with and without the railcard? Now I may be being a bit stupid here, but why would I search for tickets without using the railcard? Or the other option is to do all my booking via telesales to an 0845 number, at my expense!
Anyway, where do I go from here? My partner is in the progress of writing to ScotRail about the situation, as all we have had so far is standard pre written replies, twice they have been word for word identical, apart from the name at the bottom!
One reply I have had from a forum member was to 'write to the top man at ScotRail, writing to him in person, cc'ing all the correspondence, and saying you'll write to Watchdog, "Jessica Investigates" in the Daily Telegraph and all the Railway Mags until you get the refund to which you're entitled.'
Is it worth pushing this or just put it down to bad luck?
Any advice or comments will be greatly appreciated.
CSK
With the odd post cropping up recently about complaints and customer service, I thought id pop mine in here and see what you think and what I should consider doing next? Be warned though, it may take a bit of reading, but here goes.....
The following is a copy of the e-mail I sent to ScotRail customer services and explains what has happened and this will explain to you all what has happened in our case........
Hi,
Sorry this is going to be a bit long winded.
The original situation is that we have booked two trips on the Caledonian Sleeper,
03/12/09 London Euston – Fort William
06/12/09 Fort William – London Euston
We booked these tickets through the First ScotRail website on 02/10/09 and picked our tickets up from the ticket machines at Nottingham station on the same day. The tickets were booked with the use of a disabled adult railcard and the total cost was £331.20 each way, or £662.40 in total.
After telling a friend about this, we had a look at the bookings again and found that if you searched for the exact same tickets, same date, time and class, but WITHOUT using a disabled adult railcard that the price offered was £272.00 each way, a total of £544.00, a huge £117.60 cheaper than if you used the railcard! As you will no doubt know, you have to pay for a disabled adult railcard, which in turn should make your journeys cheaper, not more expensive.
I reported this to enquires and customer relations on 03/10/09 and got the following reply on 06/10/09.......
Thank you for your email dated 3 October 2009 in connection with your journeys between London Euston and Fort William in December.
I have looked at the cost of Sleeper First Singles, and these are £184.00 each without railcard discount and £165.60 with, so the total of £662.40 would appear correct. There is a cheaper Sleeper First Single at a cost of £136.00 without railcard discount and I can only recommend you contact web support regarding availability of the quota on 0845 3050250.
Thank you for contacting ScotRail. Should you need to reply to this email, please respond to [email protected].
Yours sincerely
Colin Powers
Customer Relations Advisor
I followed the instruction to contact web support, firstly on 06/10/09, I spoke to a woman who asked for various reference numbers and details about my journeys, she was unable to find my tickets after asking countless times if it was a bargain berth, even though I had stated the tickets were first sleeper single, and I was then was placed on hold for over 20 minutes, with no explanations as to why I was being held this long, before I hung up.
I tried again today (08/10/09) and firstly spoke to a man who seemed to have no idea what I was talking about, I was asked for no details about the my contact details, booking information or tickets, except the reference number for the FastTicket collection confirmation I had received, to which I was told quite bluntly that the reference is invalid, and that was the end of the conversation. The man I spoke to was pretty unhelpful and did not seem to know what my problem was.
I tried again and finally got through to a very helpful woman, who listened to the situation and checked through all the details I had given, she took my e-mail address and got my tickets up in a matter of seconds. She checked through my situation and found the problem straight away, stating that it was a website error and the £272.00 tickets should have shown up when searching with a disabled adult railcard, I was on hold for no more than a few minutes.
I was informed that the situation could only be rectified by cancelling my 2 booked trips and re-booking the new tickets at the cheaper price. This is all well and good but when I asked when the refund would be placed back into my account I was told I would have to mail the tickets I have back and a refund would be in my account by 28/10/09 at the earliest, providing I posted the tickets today. Sadly this situation is not really any help to us, firstly I do not have £544 spare in my account to book the new tickets now, and secondly I am not willing to wait until 28/10/09 to book new tickets because the sleeper to Fort William is only 2 coaches and we are risking not getting first class tickets, or any tickets at all, especially as it is only just over a month before we travel. We have several other journeys booked as part of this trip and to not be able to get the Caledonain Sleeper tickets we want would flush another £500 down the toilet.
On a side note with first class booking, When we made our original booking for the London Euston to Fort William we had to add 4 separate booking to the basket before we got a shared cabin (next to each other with connecting door), even though we stated each time that we wanted a shared cabin. We were given berth numbers at opposite ends of the carriage so we had to add the tickets and then remove the ones we didn’t want when we had a shared cabin.
So in review, we have had to spend almost £120 over the odds due to a website error not giving the full range of tickets to disabled adult railcard holders, along with having to make three phone calls to an 0845 number, on two occasions the operative seemed to not have the knowledge about the tickets to rectify the problem.
I am a huge fan of ScotRail, the service onboard is always clean and the staff are friendly, I think the Caledonain Sleeper service is the most beautiful journey in the UK and I would recommend it to anyone, but this situation has let us both down and we still have a return journey to Mallaig to book for 05/12/09 yet!
I doubt very much anything can be done in our situation now but I hope that the website issue can be addressed so this does not happen to anyone else, after all, you pay for your railcard to get the reduced fares, not pay more and £120 is still £120 to anyone.
Thanks
The reply I have had from ScotRail is as follows....................
Thank you for your further email dated 8 October 2009 following previous correspondence with our office. I was most concerned to learn of the difficulties you have experienced, and I am sorry that you have found cause to complain.
I will certainly log your comments for the attention of the Web Support Team Manager as we view the failure to provide any aspect of our advertised service with the greatest concern. The online booking service was launched to enable us to offer a more useful and efficient service, and I apologise that we let you down on this occasion.
We also offer a telephone booking service, which is available to sell most types of ticket, including those available through our website. If you would prefer to contact our Telesales department to make your reservation, please call 08457 55 00 33. If you are booking from outside the UK, please call our International Telesales on 0044 1752 675 670.
All our fares are sold subject to availability and are quota controlled. I would therefore suggest that in future you search for both fares with and without the railcard discount.
Your comments regarding displaying all fares with and without railcard discount have been logged for the attention of the web support managers, and ScotRail will be reviewing all customer feedback on a regular basis, to allow us to identify any areas where there is a clear need for improvement.
Thank you for contacting ScotRail. I am grateful to you for bringing this matter to my attention.
Should you need to reply to this email, please respond to [email protected].
Yours sincerely
Janine Smith
Customer Relations Advisor
So basically I have to search for all our advanced booking tickets with and without the railcard? Now I may be being a bit stupid here, but why would I search for tickets without using the railcard? Or the other option is to do all my booking via telesales to an 0845 number, at my expense!
Anyway, where do I go from here? My partner is in the progress of writing to ScotRail about the situation, as all we have had so far is standard pre written replies, twice they have been word for word identical, apart from the name at the bottom!
One reply I have had from a forum member was to 'write to the top man at ScotRail, writing to him in person, cc'ing all the correspondence, and saying you'll write to Watchdog, "Jessica Investigates" in the Daily Telegraph and all the Railway Mags until you get the refund to which you're entitled.'
Is it worth pushing this or just put it down to bad luck?
Any advice or comments will be greatly appreciated.
CSK
