Trainline false cancellations

[ricoblade]

Not sure if this is the right section but I’m on a Cross Country where someone just boarded earlier than their Advance ticket.

They said that Trainline showed their later service as cancelled and the “bloke on the gate” had told them to board this one.

The conductor eventually gave him the benefit of the doubt, although his system showed the train as running. He told the passenger “don’t look at Trainline” for cancellations as they often show false information and he should only look at the National Rail app.

How can a passenger be expected to know this and be potentially hit for a new ticket/PF?

 

[trainophile]

They should have taken a screen shot of where it said it was cancelled. I'd always do that in such a situation.

 

[gordonthemoron]

Last night RTT was not showing the 17:27 service from Milton Keynes to Euston, whereas National Rail did, the train did run

 

[LowLevel]

The trainline email people to say their train is cancelled even if it's only for part of the journey - say a Glasgow - Plymouth train is cancelled between Glasgow and Edinburgh and the customer is travelling Leeds to Birmingham they'll get an email telling them their train is cancelled.

It's too blunt and causes a lot of problems.

 

[fandroid]

The trainline email people to say their train is cancelled even if it's only for part of the journey - say a Glasgow - Plymouth train is cancelled between Glasgow and Edinburgh and the customer is travelling Leeds to Birmingham they'll get an email telling them their train is cancelled.

It's too blunt and causes a lot of problems.

Someone in RDG should threaten to cancel Trainline's licence to sell tickets if they cannot sort out basic customer information. That passenger could easily have been threatened with a Penalty fare (or worse).

EDIT:

Later posts, specifically from Adam Williams, strongly indicate that the problem very likely arose from the way the industry systems had been used by the operators, and that a retailer like Trainline was probably just as much a victim of that as the passenger was

 

[Haywain]

Someone in RDG should threaten to cancel Trainline's licence to sell tickets if they cannot sort out basic customer information. That passenger could easily have been threatened with a Penalty fare (or worse).

That is very much wishful thinking. It will never happen as Trainline cannot fail accreditation.

 

[Adsy125]

That is very much wishful thinking. It will never happen as Trainline cannot fail accreditation.

Why not?

 

[Haywain]

Why not?

Because they are "self-accrediting".

 

[Wallsendmag]

Why not?

Because they are "self-accrediting".

Look how well that worked with a certain plane builder

 

[Adam Williams]

The trainline email people to say their train is cancelled even if it's only for part of the journey - say a Glasgow - Plymouth train is cancelled between Glasgow and Edinburgh and the customer is travelling Leeds to Birmingham they'll get an email telling them their train is cancelled.

It's too blunt and causes a lot of problems.

I can't comment on Trainline's implementation, but most retailers are now required to use an industry system called the "timetable comparator service".

Some of these spurious cancellation emails are entirely out of the retailer's control because trains get removed and re-added under a different UID in the timetable data by train planners (rather than just modifying the original services directly), and these then get picked up as "cancellations". Avanti and other TOCs have done this in the past - cancelling all their LTP trains in bulk on days where there is e.g. strike action, and then creating individual new STP schedules for the trains they do intend to actually run on the day. It's not the correct way to do it, but it still gets done nonetheless.

There's nothing to map from the LTP scheduled service to the new STP scheduled service, and so you end up sending out false cancellation emails if TCS can't infer it's the same service properly.

If you were made aware of the exact later service @ricoblade (and can still remember it!), we could probably look at the historical timetable & realtime data to determine if the TOC ever did advise of a cancellation.

Someone in RDG should threaten to cancel Trainline's licence to sell tickets if they cannot sort out basic customer information

Presumably if it turns out to be the TOC's data issue, we should threaten to terminate their national rail contract? :P

 

[ThisIsSurbiton]

Because they are "self-accrediting".

There are a lot of people there working on accreditation who'd be surprised by that!

I can't comment on Trainline's implementation, but most retailers are now required to use an industry system called the "timetable comparator service".

Trainline uses that service, it's also possible that this was a cancellation on the day - I see many examples of trains cancelled then reinstated minutes later. I imagine that keeping up with that is difficult

 

[Tramfan]

I was on a train out of Edinburgh recently where another passenger had boarded with an advance ticket for a later service, as they believed their booked train was cancelled, but it transpired their connecting train (different TOC) was the cancelled one. My first thought was to wonder if they'd booked through Trainline.

 

[Haywain]

There are a lot of people there working on accreditation who'd be surprised by that!

Where - at Trainline? If they're not there will be a good few people at RDG wondering who is carrying out accreditation.

 

[Watershed]

Some of these spurious cancellation emails are entirely out of the retailer's control because trains get removed and re-added under a different UID in the timetable data by train planners (rather than just modifying the original services directly), and these then get picked up as "cancellations". Avanti and other TOCs have done this in the past - cancelling all their LTP trains in bulk on days where there is e.g. strike action, and then creating individual new STP schedules for the trains they do intend to actually run on the day. It's not the correct way to do it, but it still gets done nonetheless.

Unfortunately there just isn't sufficient awareness amongst most train planners as to the implications of what they do. STP work such as this is also often done by the least experienced planners, which doesn't exactly help.

 

[Haywain]

I think that it's a case of not having joined up thinking, so that they (the train planners) might know the operational impacts of what they do but not the commercial impacts. Those 'false cancellations' not only cause passengers to suffer inconvenience and uncertainty and to change plans but also cause payouts through automated delay repay. There will also be a hidden costs in staff time through enquiries and customer relations contacts. The same lack of joined up thinking applies in the design of the various systems involved.

Unfortunately there just isn't sufficient awareness amongst most train planners as to the implications of what they do. STP work such as this is also often done by the least experienced planners, which doesn't exactly help.

I don't know much of train planning, but I wonder if it's a case of doing what's easy rather than what works well for other systems.

 

[ricoblade]

They should have taken a screen shot of where it said it was cancelled. I'd always do that in such a situation.

He showed the conductor Trainline showing the cancellation, the conductor was having none of it, saying "don't rely on Trainline". He did let him continue to travel thuogh.

I can't comment on Trainline's implementation, but most retailers are now required to use an industry system called the "timetable comparator service".

Some of these spurious cancellation emails are entirely out of the retailer's control because trains get removed and re-added under a different UID in the timetable data by train planners (rather than just modifying the original services directly), and these then get picked up as "cancellations". Avanti and other TOCs have done this in the past - cancelling all their LTP trains in bulk on days where there is e.g. strike action, and then creating individual new STP schedules for the trains they do intend to actually run on the day. It's not the correct way to do it, but it still gets done nonetheless.

There's nothing to map from the LTP scheduled service to the new STP scheduled service, and so you end up sending out false cancellation emails if TCS can't infer it's the same service properly.

If you were made aware of the exact later service @ricoblade (and can still remember it!), we could probably look at the historical timetable & realtime data to determine if the TOC ever did advise of a cancellation.


Presumably if it turns out to be the TOC's data issue, we should threaten to terminate their national rail contract? :P

I was just listening and didn't hear the passenger's journey. We were on the 15:10 Cross Country from Oxford to Newcastle and this happened after the passenger boarded at Banbury (might have been Leamington Spa). His "cancelled" train was a lot later, he said he'd left work early as the one we were on was his only other option.

 

[Adam Williams]

the conductor was having none of it, saying "don't rely on Trainline"

Not the first time you have on-train and station staff implying retailers are doing things wrong, when the reality is rarely that black and white.

It's all particularly ironic when CrossCountry's own retail channel is powered by Trainline!

 

[Hadders]

He showed the conductor Trainline showing the cancellation, the conductor was having none of it, saying "don't rely on Trainline". He did let him continue to travel thuogh.

It really is about time that train companies eradicated this sort of attitude from their staff.

Trainline is the largest retailer of train tickets in this country and to tell passengers not to rely on their advice is staggeringly poor customer service. The member of staff should’ve taken details of the message the passenger was sent and reported it to their company so that it could be escalated with the appropriate people within the train company/RDG accreditation/Trainline. The passenger should, of course, be allowed to continue their journey without question.

 

[AlterEgo]

A passenger is certainly completely entitled to refer to an email from their ticket retailer informing them of a cancellation.

 

[Adam Williams]

It really is about time that train companies eradicated this sort of attitude from their staff.

It's pervasive and many of the TOCs don't give a damn about it.

I found myself having to complain about a FirstGroup employee who had described Raileasy as a "cowboy outfit" to one of our customers a few months ago.

The root cause of the customer's problems? The TOC had screwed up their restrictions data, telling journey planners that a ticket type with "off-peak" in its description was completely valid for arrivals into London Terminals. Getting this fixed took the best part of the year.

 

[Hadders]

I found myself having to complain about a FirstGroup employee who had described Raileasy as a "cowboy outfit" to one of our customers a few months ago.

That really is unacceptable. There’s a strong argument that the member of staff should be disciplined for making comments like that. As a very minimum a brief should go out to all front line staff clarifying the position of itineraries generated by any accredited retailer.

This won’t happen, of course. The railway industry will continue to come up with excuses why it cannot be done yet at the same time struggle to understand why it has such a poor reputation with the public.

 

[Watershed]

I think that it's a case of not having joined up thinking, so that they (the train planners) might know the operational impacts of what they do but not the commercial impacts. Those 'false cancellations' not only cause passengers to suffer inconvenience and uncertainty and to change plans but also cause payouts through automated delay repay. There will also be a hidden costs in staff time through enquiries and customer relations contacts. The same lack of joined up thinking applies in the design of the various systems involved.

Indeed. A lack of joined up, "whole system" thinking is behind a significant proportion of the problems the rail industry has. No-one can really blame the individual train planners or even the departments or functions as a whole, as there's no-one who really considers what they do from a commercial perspective.

From my experience of working with train planners, they're perfectly conscientious people. They just haven't got a full appreciation of what happens with the schedule data after it's been uploaded by Network Rail.

I don't know much of train planning, but I wonder if it's a case of doing what's easy rather than what works well for other systems.

Absolutely this. To be fair to the TOCs, it was Network Rail policy during the Network Rail signaller strikes that all LTP schedules would be cancelled and those that were running would be STP BI (new, standalone) schedules. This will have influenced the TOCs into continuing this approach with their individual strikes.

 

[virgintrain1]

This is a regular problem. Trainline seems particularly bad at live information such as the live journey planners showing the departure time as the arrival time as well as platform numbers that have long since been changed. When staff have to deal with last trains missed etc, can you blame them for advising against using Trainline for live journey info when so often incorrect . Even the TOCs twitter teams advice against Trainline use for this purpose.

 

[fandroid]

This is a regular problem. Trainline seems particularly bad at live information such as the live journey planners showing the departure time as the arrival time as well as platform numbers that have long since been changed. When staff have to deal with last trains missed etc, can you blame them for advising against using Trainline for live journey info when so often incorrect . Even the TOCs twitter teams advice against Trainline use for this purpose.

It might be valid advice for staff to discourage reliance on ticket seller real-time information during disruptions. That's fair enough, but it should be done in a way that doesn't seem to pile blame onto the ticket seller. I posted on here recently a disruption incident on SWR where that company's own platform displays and automated announcements could not be relied on either! The only source of correct information was a single member of platform staff who didn't seem to have any access to the pa system.

 

[pdq]

Sounds a bit like the problem stems from TL actually being customer focused. They have set automated alerts to inform their customers of problems with their journey. This is overall a good thing and is something that just wasn't possible even a few years ago, before there was widespread knowledge of travellers' details.
It may be that the alert definition or wording needs tweaking, but they can only build that definition based on what the data provided to them is showing.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Sounds a bit like the problem stems from TL actually being customer focused. They have set automated alerts to inform their customers of problems with their journey. This is overall a good thing and is something that just wasn't possible even a few years ago, before there was widespread knowledge of travellers' details.
It may be that the alert definition or wording needs tweaking, but they can only build that definition based on what the data provided to them is showing.

More like a bad implemntation of the system

 

[td97]

Sounds a bit like the problem stems from TL actually being customer focused.

Indeed. Is there even a TOC booking site that emails the customer in the event of a cancellation/delay for advance ticket holders? XC & Northern certainly don't

 

[Wallsendmag]

Indeed. Is there even a TOC booking site that emails the customer in the event of a cancellation/delay for advance ticket holders? XC & Northern certainly don't

LNER do with the option of a free online change of journey

 

[35B]

LNER do with the option of a free online change of journey

That is far from the whole of it, and doesn't address the impact of losing an early tier Advance ticket and having to change to a different tier or even re-route.

My son travelled this summer from Grantham to Cambridge, using an Advance ticket sold by LNER via Stevenage. GTR had cancelled and then STP reinstated their services, which triggered the auto-alert - and with it cancellation of his reservations. It took considerable time to work through with the (excellent) LNER call centre and establish his ability to travel; the "easy" option would have been to pay significantly more for travel via Ely.

 

[Wallsendmag]

That is far from the whole of it, and doesn't address the impact of losing an early tier Advance ticket and having to change to a different tier or even re-route.

My son travelled this summer from Grantham to Cambridge, using an Advance ticket sold by LNER via Stevenage. GTR had cancelled and then STP reinstated their services, which triggered the auto-alert - and with it cancellation of his reservations. It took considerable time to work through with the (excellent) LNER call centre and establish his ability to travel; the "easy" option would have been to pay significantly more for travel via Ely.

As I said it’s set up to offer a free change, the ticket you have now is changed for to whatever is available