Southeastern's booking engine

[blakey1152]

I made the fatal mistake of trying out Southeasterns booking engine this afternoon as I planned to go down to Rochester tomorrow with my other half and my daughter and a friend and their daughter (so 3 adults, 2 children)

I have a Network Railcard so I tried to buy tickets for 3 adults, 2 children from Slade Green to Rochester for tomorrow.

I wanted to buy off peak returns plus the kids for a quid offer (Which I believe you can only get on the Southeastern site)

Managed to add the tickets to my basket but the website then threw a fit when trying to check out strangely insisting that 2018 was not a valid year for the expiry date of my card. In fact no matter what year I put it it was not valid!
I gave up and phoned up customer services to complain about it and they said they would look into it.

An hour or so later I stupidly thought it would be a good idea to try again (must be the sun shining)...

So yet again, I managed to add the off peak returns to my basket and go to the checkout..and this time the web site was quite happy to accept 2018 as a valid year so I paid for the tickets.
Then I clicked on the link showing my order summary after I had paid for the tickets and my off peak returns had suddenly changed to a groupsave 3 ticket - which ironically was the same price but it wasn't the tickets I wanted to get.

Another call to customer services revealed that I did indeed choose off peak returns but the system had changed them to groupsave after I had purchased them somehow - because of this and the fact that I hadn't picked up the tickets they would have refunded me without any fee and I could repurchase some new tickets.

Fortunately we are all travelling together anyway so it's not worth the hassle of fighting with their booking engine again - I honestly don't know why they have to change things that weren't broken in the first place.

Oh and it was lucky that I took a screenshot of the TOD collection code and order number because I never got an e-mail confirmation of it!!!

Blakey

 

[yorkie]

Still worth a complaint, it's pure luck you are all travelling together and it could easily have become a problem.

Some people have been harassed and persecuted by a train company for this (e.g. Sold Wrong Ticket - in this case it was a ticket office doing it, but same thing).

It's not a level playing field.

 

[causton]

Oh no, another website using this system.

May I say that in the weeks following us adopting that same booking engine, suddenly a new Authority to Travel procedure was issued for customers having problem accessing online bookings? Didn't specifically mention our new website was duff, but...

Had lots of Southern customers before that complain they had not received their confirmation email, or it doesn't state what times they booked etc, or their TOD code was there but did not exist in the database at all! Brilliant work.

 

[yorkie]

Yes, all three Govia companies (London Midland, Southeastern and GTR) are using this awful booking system.

I tried to test this using the LM site, searching for Slade Green to Rochester, but got "An unknown error occurred when trying to complete your request. Please try again and if you still see this message - please contact us." and also "Sorry, there are no return journeys available for the following search: Slade Green to Rochester"

It did eventually work, but it wasn't clear what it was selling.

An awful booking system for an awful company. Avoid!

 

[blakey1152]

I thought I would post a quick update...
I got a letter in the post because I complained about the awful booking engine and it's various failings

Southeastern have said they are looking into the issues and suggested that if I have any future problems to use Thetrainline website instead!!!!

 

[Wolfie]

Yes, all three Govia companies (London Midland, Southeastern and GTR) are using this awful booking system.

I tried to test this using the LM site, searching for Slade Green to Rochester, but got "An unknown error occurred when trying to complete your request. Please try again and if you still see this message - please contact us." and also "Sorry, there are no return journeys available for the following search: Slade Green to Rochester"

It did eventually work, but it wasn't clear what it was selling.

An awful booking system for an awful company. Avoid!

An awful system, which is completely customer unfriendly, from a vile awful company (Govia) which doesn't care about customers (or staff)...quelle surprise! Avoid like the plague and, if you really have to use their services, claim for every delay, complain about every problem etc etc...

 

[Kentish Paul]

Southeastern have said they are looking into the issues and suggested that if I have any future problems to use Thetrainline website instead!!!!

Ridiculous response from Southeastern. Awful website since it changed. Didn't even show some of the normal trains I use . Went over to the GWR site and hey presto, my trains came back.