Has anyone been using London Underground's Online Customer Charter Refund
Form at https://tube.tfl.gov.uk/secure/charter/?

I first started using it for a claim on the 27th of October and was issued a
reference number in the low 10000s.Yesterday I received a form from Customer
Services saying they are unable to process my claim "with the details
provided" and are asking me to supply time of delay, journey start station,
journey end station and occurance of delay. In fact, I received 3 forms; one
for this claim, one for a claim on the 28th of October and one on the 12th
of November. All were submitted using the online application form.

I just called Customer Services. They've just received an email making them
aware of this issue although they couldn't tell me why it was happening or
whether it would affect any further applications (I currently have a further
3 outstanding claims submitted online with them). I asked them how I was
supposed to remember the details of journeys made over 7 weeks ago (I
actually keep a note of all applications in case of cock-ups like this and
for verification). They said just fill in what I can remember. I suggested
they put something on the website addressing the issues as they'd probably
get a lot of calls about this. The letter said return it to the Customer
Service centre. I forgot to ask whether I could send them altogther, to the
freepost address.

So how far back has this issue been occuring and how far in the future can
we expect it to continue?

I was really pleased when LUL came out with the Online Customer Charter
Claim form. I thought it was very progressive and indicated a desire to help
customers. However, after using the form, I found it almost as much a pain
as filling in a physical form. I emailed them detailing suggestions and
improvements to the form. Most of them related to the repetitive personal
information that could be stored and automatically filled in. You are
required to log in to fill in a Claim Form and it appears to populate the
form with your email address and postcode (or is that my Google toolbar
auto-filling), yet it doesn't fill in the photocard number which is stored
in your profile at http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/content/ytube/default.asp. Since
most people are likely to complete a claim on the day of the occurance, why
not default the delay details to today's date? Since you can't apply for a
delay that occured more than 14 days ago, why not build that limit in the
dropdowns. Most people commute the same journey so why not store the start
and end stations?

So, like I said, I emailed Customer Services about the suggestions I had. I
received an automated response saying they'd received my message but due to
the influx of correspondance, it might be some time before I'd receive a
reply. To add insult to injury, I received an email from BMRB International,
a market research company, with a questionnaire/survey about the Customer
Service Centre. I detailed how I'd contacted them, and that I'd not received
an adequate reply to my last contact with them. I even provided my contact
details so I could be contacted by the LU CSC about a specific outstanding
query and guess what? Still no contact!

Like I said, Situation Normal, All F**ked Up!

--
Craig
D11665 FSB5
http://www.poxon.org/Craig/Skydive/