Ticket office staff attitudes and tickets from other destinations

[RJ]

The failure to acknowledge the incompetence is the issue. Why does the railway industry have such an acknowledgement failure I wonder ? If it was acknowledged something could be done to address the matter.

It's really difficult to find people who will turn up for work, on time and not play games with sick leave etc, let alone find people who are motivated to do a good job - and the unions will defend people who choose to be of a very low calibre to the hilt.

Management can't exactly be blamed for that - they're very restricted in what they can do. Some people who receive extra training are about as good at retaining the knowledge as a sieve is at holding water - it just becomes a vicious circle of the company being blamed for not providing enough training and the person is able to stay in that job until retirement if they so wish. And when they're busy dealing with intrinsic issues pertaining to attendance, Schedule 17 compliance, disciplinaries for school-esque type spats, dealing with building contractors and local stakeholders, pitching in when there is disruption, heaps of paperwork, briefings and the rest, there isn't exactly much time to dedicate to dealing with technical complaints which the member of staff will either have forgotten or deny all knowledge of.

I've had my fair share of experiences at ticket offices where even selling a point to point ticket or applying a Priv discount was beyond the capabilities of the clerk - but there are far more productive and profitable ways to spend time than dealing with TOC Customer Service departments.

 

[urbophile]

What business is it of the ticket clerk how you intend to get to the starting station? You may be intending to drive there, or be driven, and yet find it more convenient to have your ticket ready by buying it from another station. Similarly collecting prebooked tickets from a TVM; you don't have to collect it from the same station that your journey starts from.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

What business is it of the ticket clerk how you intend to get to the starting station?....

I refer you to post #23 on page 2 of this thread.

 

[rg177]

Well today I've received a slightly worrying response from GWR.

They've repeatedly said in the email that they're speaking to staff at SLOUGH with regards to what's happened, as opposed to the actually involved Stroud. Cue a hasty email back to kindly remind them.

Doesn't fill me with a lot of faith.

Sent from my LG-K350 using Tapatalk

 

[tspaul26]

Well today I've received a slightly worrying response from GWR.

They've repeatedly said in the email that they're speaking to staff at SLOUGH with regards to what's happened, as opposed to the actually involved Stroud. Cue a hasty email back to kindly remind them.

Doesn't fill me with a lot of faith.

Sent from my LG-K350 using Tapatalk

Could be worse: they could have forwarded your complaint to Crosscountry like the poor beggar on another thread.

 

[rg177]

Could be worse: they could have forwarded your complaint to Crosscountry like the poor beggar on another thread.

Quick call confirms that it was actually sent to Stroud and the person writing the email was clearly on two planets at once...

 

[bnm]

My filming of staff interaction, following regular incidences of being refused boarding with valid tickets was a great help in ensuring my complaints to the the TOC were taken seriously. I filmed twice, once overtly and once covertly.

Did I publish the videos online? No, although I was tempted when rail staff contributors to this, and other forums were dismissive of the problems I was regularly encountering. In the end the videos were used merely for evidence gathering and as an aide memoir for the interaction. I didn't even send them to the TOC or show them to the TOC Director I met face to face.

When you experience the same issue over and over again I think you should record the interactions.

 

[Philip]

A small (but still alarmingly frequent) number of Virgin and Northern staff being arsey is the reason I now buy everything online and collect from TVMs, with the exception of PlusBus, RTVs and Merseyrail (normally a brilliant bunch).

Most booking office staff are of course great, but I got sick and tired of having a full blown debate with them every month when they didn't like the sound of what I was asking for.

Excuses/BS that I've heard from a booking office that I'm yet to hear from Webtis:

• [after selling me an Advance ticket for the wrong date] "Oh ffs"
• "You can't start on a ticket partway through. No, it's not allowed."
• "You want an excess? Can I just see your ticket and railcard there?" [snatches ticket wallet from my hand and empties it all over the desk]
• "I'm not going to print your tickets off. Go get the card" [from someone else 30 miles away...?]
• "Come back later mate, having a fag"
• [on excess fares] "I don't know how to do those, you'll have to go to Oxford Road"
• "You can't buy that here. That's fraud" [after I asked for a (cheaper) ticket from a station further away from my destination (!)

Some of those you mentioned mean the ticket office staff would be completely within their rights, depending on circumstances. There are restrictions regarding break of journey (either getting on late or getting off early) which don't permit it on advance tickets. The card and reference number is required for collecting pre-paid tickets and where there is a working ticket machine the ticket office staff are correct to direct you to it. And whilst there's no excuse for snatching, the ticket office staff need to see your old ticket and railcard when purchasing an excess, to input the old ticket details when building up the new one.

Sometimes the job the booking office staff do can be made very difficult by customers who think they are 'right' and some of the points you mention are classic reasons why!

 

[Merseysider]

Some of those you mentioned mean the ticket office staff would be completely within their rights, depending on circumstances. There are restrictions regarding break of journey (either getting on late or getting off early) which don't permit it on advance tickets. The card and reference number is required for collecting pre-paid tickets and where there is a working ticket machine the ticket office staff are correct to direct you to it. And whilst there's no excuse for snatching, the ticket office staff need to see your old ticket and railcard when purchasing an excess, to input the old ticket details when building up the new one.

Sometimes the job the booking office staff do can be made very difficult by customers who think they are 'right' and some of the points you mention are classic reasons why!

I'm not sure why you've bumped a thread from two months ago, that's rather odd.

 

[TUC]

Yes, it's a very strong statement. To some of the armchair experts I'm sure it comes across as a reasonable statement, that someone should be denied a livelihood because they couldn't find an obscure ticket in a complicated retailing system, or have been given incorrect instructions by local management.

In truth, there are people out there who aren't suited to their roles, we all know this, but there are also a lot of people working in ticket offices who aren't trained properly to fulfil all elements of their role. Add on top of that the hideously complicated fares system and it's a recipe for disaster. This is the fault of the TOCs, not the individual clerks.

You mean the same fares system that many people on this forum manage to navigate without any training?

 

[Philip]

I'm not sure why you've bumped a thread from two months ago, that's rather odd.

I came across this thread from outside and happened to see your post and felt the record needed putting straight on certain things you've mentioned. I work in an office myself and it's the kind of things you've been saying which often cause problems.