Someone needs to be fired over the National Rail Enquiries website - this is TOO bad.

[digitaltoast]

I've had no time for National Rail since ATOC nearly doubled the price of my ticket with their Simplified Train Fare scam.

The snow was no excuse for the site totally failing for 2 days, but now there's no snow and it STILL fails! Or rather, the database fails - I've not been able to book an advance ticket since I first tried at 9am (could be a lot longer), on ANY site. It simply won't connect. Here's the message I just sent to them:

Your advanced tickets booking system has been down since 9am (it's now 2pm, still down.).

It's not snowing, and it's been 5 hours now. Pretty poor. What's the excuse? I bet it's annoying your advertisers just as much as your customers. Can anyone get back to me on xxxxxx and let me know who's responsible and why this happens so often?

All booking sites are saying:

"We are sorry; currently we are unable to give you availability information about fares.
This is due to the National Reservations System being unavailable. Please try again later."

I look forward to hearing from you within 24 hours.

By the way, according to that site "We handle over 360,000 customer enquiries every day" - well, I hope each and every one of those sends an email. Some overpaid oik needs to lose their job over this - I know if anyone in the private sector had run such an important site so badly, they'd have been out of the door long ago!

 

[a22book]

I totally agree, what was wrong with the old site.

I'm currently trying to view the london euston arrivals, not a chance. It work fine on my iphone.

 

[brompton rail]

But you can't book travel tickets on National Rail, only via TOC sites (the better choice) or via trainline (rip-off).

 

[MCR247]

"We are sorry; currently we are unable to give you availability information about fares.
This is due to the National Reservations System being unavailable. Please try again later."

All websites use NRES

 

[yorkie]

I think you meant to say they all use the National Reservation System? NRES is National Rail Enquiry Service.

 

[sheff1]

Some overpaid oik needs to lose their job over this - I know if anyone in the private sector had run such an important site so badly, they'd have been out of the door long ago!

ATOC is the private sector. Perhaps we should renationalise

 

[MCR247]

I think you meant to say they all use the National Reservation System? NRES is National Rail Enquiry Service.

Yeeah sorry

 

[fgwoll1e]

This wasn't just an online issue, it was the same at Train Stations unfortunately.

Was back working around 16:00 although before this time with several attempts you may have been able to book a ticket.

 

[OwlMan]

I've had no time for National Rail since ATOC nearly doubled the price of my ticket with their Simplified Train Fare scam.

The snow was no excuse for the site totally failing for 2 days, but now there's no snow and it STILL fails! Or rather, the database fails - I've not been able to book an advance ticket since I first tried at 9am (could be a lot longer), on ANY site. It simply won't connect. Here's the message I just sent to them:



By the way, according to that site "We handle over 360,000 customer enquiries every day" - well, I hope each and every one of those sends an email. Some overpaid oik needs to lose their job over this - I know if anyone in the private sector had run such an important site so badly, they'd have been out of the door long ago!

I agree that the revamp of the website is crap but you cannot blame the website for NRS being down. NRS is the cental system that is used to reserve tickets and is used by stations, travel agents and the websites.


Peter

 

[digitaltoast]

I agree that the revamp of the website is crap but you cannot blame the website for NRS being down. NRS is the cental system that is used to reserve tickets and is used by stations, travel agents and the websites.

Ah, I do beg your pardon. I thought NRS was ATOC, and when I saw NRE's disclaimer:
"National Rail Enquiries (NRE) is part of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), which is responsible for providing business services to the Train Operating Companies."
you can see why I assumed they were the same! In that case, who provides the NRS data?

Also, remember they promised me a reply within 24 hours? Anyone care to hazard a guess as to whether a reply has come yet?

Time to resort to a recorded letter - again! I'm determined to get a name and full explanation over this.

 

[glynn80]

Ah, I do beg your pardon. I thought NRS was ATOC, and when I saw NRE's disclaimer:
"National Rail Enquiries (NRE) is part of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), which is responsible for providing business services to the Train Operating Companies."
you can see why I assumed they were the same! In that case, who provides the NRS data?

The National Reservations System does come under the auspices of ATOC specifically the Rail Settlement Plan division. However the operation of the system is outsourced to Capgemini who provide the IT infrastructure, Application Management and Infrastructure Management support of the reservation service.

 

[digitaltoast]

The National Reservations System does come under the auspices of ATOC specifically the Rail Settlement Plan division. However the operation of the system is outsourced to Capgemini who provide the IT infrastructure, Application Management and Infrastructure Management support of the reservation service.

Ah, you sound a good person to ask!

Who runs the National Rail Enquiries website infrastructure and technology?

Who runs the NRS back end database that failed so widely, badly and for so long last week?

 

[glynn80]

Who runs the National Rail Enquiries website infrastructure and technology?

National Rail Enquires Services Ltd. operate the National Rail Enquiries website infrastructure and technology (hosted in Rotherham if your interested). NRES is wholly- owned by the 25 train operating companies and administered through the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) (so basically it is an in-house operation).

Who runs the NRS back end database that failed so widely, badly and for so long last week?

Capgemini, who I mentioned above.

 

[djw1981]

They are not known as cRapgemini in the outscoursing market for nothing - cf cRapita as well,

 

[digitaltoast]

Capgemini, who I mentioned above.

So, I called CapGemini in the UK. Guess where I ended up talking to? India of course!

Apparently "we don't have a technology department", but after much insistance, I was given the number of a Lindsey Sugden, whose mobile voicemail says she is from The Trainline. So I think I'm onto a wrong'un there.

It's not putting me off though - I'm going to get a name out of this. Now I know there's outsourcing involved, my teeth are even sharper!

While I wait, let's amuse ourselves with some snippets from the front page of the CapGemini website.

Transforming your business, from strategy through to execution, to bring about sustainable performance improvement.

Combining industry experience with business and technology expertise to develop winning capabilities for greater performance.

IT services and business consultancy company capable of offering a full range of services for which it selects leading-edge techniques and the best proven methods.

UPDATE: Lindsey called me back - she IS the wrong person, but knows where to ask to get hold of the right person... waiting on a callback.

 

[djw1981]

ATOS Origin are slightly better as far as outsourced IT goes - they appear to listen to what users want then design bad software, not just try and offload pre-written bad software onto people first. Consultation really lifts the mood

 

[glynn80]

Just as an aside, the hardware powering the National Reservation System is actually being replaced in April. Whilst this occurs however the system will have a 2-3 day outage whereby no new reservations will be able to be created (rendering Advance fare bookings during this period impossible), no reservation reports will be able to be produced and no reservation labels will be able to be printed:

1. What is the NRS technical refresh?
The National Reservations Service went live in late December 2004. It was always expected that after five years of operation the hardware would need to be replaced and upgraded, and provision was made for this in the original budget. The project to do this was signed off in the Summer of last year and since then we have been working with Capgemini to take things forward.

2. When will cutover take place?
We are planning cutover for the Easter weekend (2-5 April). During the cutover the system will not be available to make reservations nor produce reports and labels. This period should be no longer than two days. We will be seeking to keep it to an absolute minimum and more details will be released towards the end of the month when Capgemini have presented us with their detailed cutover plan.

3. What exactly is changing?
Only the hardware and system software – there are no functional changes planned. NRS will work exactly as it does now, and this includes all TIS, printers and websites connected to the service.

 

[Capybara]

Now I know there's outsourcing involved, my teeth are even sharper!

The whole railway system has been outsourced for the last 15 years or so.

 

[Royston Vasey]

So, I called CapGemini in the UK. Guess where I ended up talking to? India of course!

Apparently "we don't have a technology department", but after much insistance, I was given the number of a Lindsey Sugden, whose mobile voicemail says she is from The Trainline. So I think I'm onto a wrong'un there.

It's not putting me off though - I'm going to get a name out of this. Now I know there's outsourcing involved, my teeth are even sharper!

UPDATE: Lindsey called me back - she IS the wrong person, but knows where to ask to get hold of the right person... waiting on a callback.

To the OP, I understand your frustration and the new NR website is a cock-up all round - that is a side issue anyway as has been established.

Essentially you are upset that an IT system was down, an important one but so are countless others, and you are "determined to get a full name and explanation" and think that someone needs to be fired.

Guess what - sometimes IT systems go down, it's nobody's fault, they are repaired ASAP and restored and patches put in place to stop them happening again. So the system was unavailable for a few hours. Inconvenient, yes; disastrous, no.

Why are you so determined to get a name? What are you going to do with it once you get it? Have you nothing better to do than harangue honest people who are trying to do their jobs, just to indulge your pointless crusade?

 

[tony_mac]

I do think that whoever agreed to screwing passengers with a deliberate 2-3 day outage does deserve to be harangued!

 

[Oswyntail]

I do think that whoever agreed to screwing passengers with a deliberate 2-3 day outage does deserve to be harangued!

It's no worse than a weekend blockade to save on several weekends possessions. Makes sense - but only if everything works perfectly afterwards, and that depends on thorough testing beforehand (so don't hold your breath)

 

[tony_mac]

they don't do a weekend blockade of the entire network at the same time! It should be perfectly possible to do an upgrade with minimal downtime, most other businesses seem to manage it.

However, I had mis-read glynn's post, as I thought that they were not allowing advance bookings for journeys at this time - but that isn't what he said.

 

[Death]

I agree with the OP on the issue of the "new" NR website...I don't use it often for ticket bookings and suchlike (And in my experience it's never been able to calculate Railcard fares correctly) but I tended to rely on it as a source of relevant documents like the NRCoC and Rover information...And since the "rebuild" of the site (More like Reformat the drive and forget to restore 80% of the data! ) I havn't been able to obtain any information that I've wanted from it.

It beggers belief why they couldn't have copied the old site over to a new domain (www.natrail.co.uk would've probabally been ideal) and left it running on the old hardware as a fallback?

I do think that whoever agreed to screwing passengers with a deliberate 2-3 day outage does deserve to be harangued!

they don't do a weekend blockade of the entire network at the same time! It should be perfectly possible to do an upgrade with minimal downtime, most other businesses seem to manage it.

Again, I agree with this.

Like any other "mainstream" public website, I would imagine that the NR site is hosted at a data centre somewhere where there should be plenty of space available to have new equipment online and working before the old hardware is shut down and removed. So surely a better option - And the one that I would've chosen in their place - Would've been to:

1. Synchronise the website and hardware upgrades to happen at the same time (Where possible),
2. Install the new hardware and get it running properly and in a stable manner,
3. Install the new NR website on the new hardware alone, leaving the old website/hardware up and still serving public enquiries,
4. Subject the new site to intense internal testing (Within NR and possibly TOCs) and possibly limited release alpha/beta public testing done by technically orientated rail users (Like some of us. 8)),
5. Respond to all error reports and outages, fix the bugs, and make sure that the new site works properly and will remain stable,
6. Down the NR site for a much more reasonable five minutes (Around 04:00 ideally) whilst NR's routers are being programmed with new IP table and routing information (To point traffic to the new equipment),
7. Confirm that everything's working well, then shutdown and DBAN the old equipment before loading it all into a truck and sending it my way for "recycling" under the WEEE Directive! :razz:

I admit that my website experience is limited to running small and low traffic affairs, but surely the above is plain common sense?

In fact, the NR website upgrade should've been really

I apologise...I couldn't help myself!

 

[digitaltoast]

Guess what - sometimes IT systems go down, it's nobody's fault, they are repaired ASAP and restored and patches put in place to stop them happening again. So the system was unavailable for a few hours. Inconvenient, yes; disastrous, no.

Why are you so determined to get a name? What are you going to do with it once you get it? Have you nothing better to do than harangue honest people who are trying to do their jobs, just to indulge your pointless crusade?

Totally missing the point - it's not like this is some folksy "best effort" job put together by an enthusiast. In fact, their version is often much better (I always use http://traintimes.org.uk/ in preference to http://wap.nationalrail.co.uk), this is a £multimillion contract paid out to a huge contractor who appears to have no accountability, and all paid for by us!

As I mentioned before, NRE alone claim 360,000 users pay day.
Even the most basic site has a failover system. The idea that all stations, ticket agents and site users across all ROCs should be knocked offline for 7-8 hours is disgraceful.

I run a backend ordering system for a toilet paper importer (classy!) and it gets pinged with an sql query and a "curl" fetch every 5 minutes. If either fail, 2 sms go out, along with emails, and a line is added to .htaccess redirecting users to a backup site until I can get to the server. Simple, free php software and basic knowledge. Anyone with half a clue would know this is the very minimum you need, and such and important site should have multiple redundancies, "heartbeat" pings and automatic failovers. I bet they get paid millions to run the NRS database.

And who are you to decide what a "pointless crusade" is? It's my business - if I took the crap that ticket inspectors who don't know their job having given me over the years (see separate posting from a while back) I'd be about £400 down over the years. It's only because not everyone is as brave as I am or willing to stand my ground and dare them to call their manager to check, or leave me alone, that they get like that.

I've even been told on I shouldn't be claiming every time my missed connection means I get the 100% refund - and why the hell not? It's not a charity! Managers get huge bonuses. If everyone claimed their entitlement and stopped treating the whole system like it was some national treasure run by enthusiasts, rather than a sad indictment of the current governments obsession with PPP with outsourcing everything possible overseas, then some socks might be pulled up. (And don't even think of mentioned Thatcher or the Tories - NuLab have had over 10 years at this).

Sorry - rant over!

 

[Royston Vasey]

And who are you to decide what a "pointless crusade" is? It's my business - if I took the crap that ticket inspectors who don't know their job having given me over the years (see separate posting from a while back) I'd be about £400 down over the years. It's only because not everyone is as brave as I am or willing to stand my ground and dare them to call their manager to check, or leave me alone, that they get like that.

I'm not saying it's not worth compaining about but I was referring specifically to your determination to get a name to blame. What good does that do?

I know you have a blog to write and it would be a headline, but this doesn't seem to be the sort of outage that any one person can fairly be held responsible for. Even if you got the name of the IT individual who maintains that part of the site, maybe the ultimate responsiblity is his manager, or his manager's manager, or the man at the top - who can say? Maybe it was a virus or a hacker attack?

This isn't the same as you not getting the correct ticket for your journies - it's a temporary outage that hasn't cost you any money, only inconvenienced you. The reaction just seems a bit out of proportion, that's all.

 

[glynn80]

I agree whole-heartedly with your statements Royston Vasey.

The complaint per se isn't frivolous but trying to pin the incident onto a single specific person makes absolutely no sense.

 

[digitaltoast]

I'm not saying it's not worth compaining about but I was referring specifically to your determination to get a name to blame. What good does that do?

The complaint per se isn't frivolous but trying to pin the incident onto a single specific person makes absolutely no sense.

It's just something I've found to be very effective through the years. Perhaps I should make it clear I wasn't after a name to splurge all over a blog, I was after a named manager to "take ownership" of the problem, as they say.

You'd be surprised: once they know that you know a name, things magically happen...

This isn't the same as you not getting the correct ticket for your journies

Who said I didn't get the correct ticket?

Let me just clarify, I ALWAYS had the correct ticket - I used the expert independent agent that I mentioned in this thread for a while when I had a series of cross-network/cross London journeys.
And the agent was ALWAYS right.

Being told you have the wrong ticket by a ticket inspector is NOT the same thing as having the wrong ticket....

 

[LondonLarry]

I do think that whoever agreed to screwing passengers with a deliberate 2-3 day outage does deserve to be harangued!

There's a planned outage over the Easter weekend for a hardware upgrade...

 

[A60K]

There's a planned outage over the Easter weekend for a hardware upgrade...

Yes, that's what was being talked about

 

[LondonLarry]

Yes, that's what was being talked about

Ooops! Skimmed over glynn80's post without reading it!