Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
|
London Transport (uk.transport.london) Discussion of all forms of transport in London. |
|
LinkBack | Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Southeastern Railway staving off Oyster PAYG
I'm at the end of my tether with my local train operating company,
Southeastern Railway (SER hereafter). They only took over the franchise 9 months ago but they signed up to it just before the government decided that all future franchises would mandate acceptance of Oyster PAYG, which basically means that if SER won't adopt Oyster voluntarily, they won't be legally compelled to for something like ten years! (As if we didn't suffer enough through the Connex years...) Anyway, on hearing recently of the Mayor's offer of £20m to get Oyster PAYG off the ground for National Rail operators, and specifically when I heard that c2c were taking it up, I contacted SER (as I had done during South Eastern's publicly owned period, to no avail) to ask about their plans for Oyster PAYG, with specific reference to the offer. They came back with the most outdated and in places downright dishonest stream of pathetic arguments against taking up the Mayor's offer you can imagine. All the golden oldies were the increased risk of fraud at ungated stations (as if bits of the Tube and the DLR can't cope with that); a claim that *no* NR operator could possibly take up the offer at the moment for lots of reasons (ridiculous when c2c had made their announcement a day or two earlier); and the outright lie that the £20m was "only a loan" so would have to be "paid back with interest". I passed the response to TfL for comment, replying in the meantime with my considered opinions and queries about their laughable response. I also replied again when Chiltern took up the offer a few days later, pointing out again that they were wrong about other NR operators; and finally when TfL replied (saying that they had contacted ATOC to complain about the misinformation SER were giving their customers - excellent!) I passed their response to SER too. My three e-mails were sent on 18, 25 and 27 January, but still no response was forthcoming today, and the deadline is looming, so tonight I rang up their customer service line. After being kept on hold for five to ten minutes, I got through to someone who could basically tell me absolutely nothing beyond the fact that because my e-mails raised complicated issues, they were all at "Head Office, in a queue, to be dealt with in order of receipt". Apparently "they have a lot of stuff" at Head Office, so they can't tell me when it's likely to be responded to. I suspect it will be some time after the 31 Jan deadline. Is there anything I can do to get some action out of this lazy, unhelpful, irritating company? My wife (she's the commuter, I'm the leisure traveller) is going to SER's Meet the Managers session on Thursday to have a rant but that's the day after the deadline has passed. Why isn't there more publicity for how selfish/greedy/obstinate the NR operators who aren't taking up this deal are being? How can we get some? It's so frustrating. Is there anything I can do, either to help get them to accept the offer, or to get them reprimanded for their misinformation and unhelpfulness? Apologies if you've read this whole post hoping it was going to get to a really interesting point of some sort. I wanted to get this all off my chest in the vain hope that somehow writing all this down would lead to me, or someone reading it, having an amazing idea that would guarantee that SER would accept Oyster PAYG within weeks. I fear I was being a little optimistic. *sigh* Sorry again, Paul |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
October half-term - 50% off all SWT off-peak day returns! | London Transport | |||
The PAYG Oystercard rip off | London Transport | |||
Southeastern - 20% discount on off-peak tickets, 9 April to 2 May | London Transport | |||
Oyster PAYG on Southeastern | London Transport | |||
Zones 1-D one-day travelcard purchase at a Southeastern Railway station | London Transport |