Tom Hark Preston Park
Will Post For Cash
- Jul 6, 2003
- 70,348
This. Totally. It's every delay-conscious commuter's anxiety-trigger announcement by the driver: 'Can the guard contact the driver please'. It's never good news.
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SASTA - what an absolute shower
- Thread starter Simster
- Start date
This. Totally. It's every delay-conscious commuter's anxiety-trigger announcement by the driver: 'Can the guard contact the driver please'. It's never good news.
Mr Bronson
Member
- Feb 24, 2009
- 45
Southern surpassed even there usual level of genius this morning. My key card has stopped working. I go to the desk at the station and after three minutes of silence she confirmed that it contained my annual season ticket. "Can you give me a new one" which I thought was not an unreasonable request. Of course not, we'll put one in the post was the response. Here it comes....."...in the mean time you're going to have to buy paper tickets until your new key card arrives. You can reclaim the money back" I'm a reasonable person but seriously. I pay you £4800 a year. Your technology is not working and you want me to stump up more money. Wow, just wow.
thedonkeycentrehalf
Retired
- Jul 7, 2003
- 8,647
Yesterday I took the train to work as I was out for a few drinks in the evening. Went to the ticket machine at West Worthing, selected my ticket for Burgess Hill, first ticket out okay but the other two are printed as void. Message on screen says you need to speak to the travel centre and you have been charged for the tickets. As my train was now pulling into the station I thought I would sort this out at the other end. When I spoke to the person in the BH ticket office (Spurs fan, lots of badges), he said that I should have sorted this out at West Worthing. I explained about my train and he said it was really difficult and couldn't I sort it out at West Worthing. I pointed out that I had no return ticket and that the ticket office at West Worthing would be closed by the time I got home.
Begrudgingly he printed me off another ticket. Given how much he had moaned I expected this to be a long and complex process. It took him less than 30 seconds to type in the reference, find the details and print off a ticket - he had spent longer moaning that it took to do the job. Customer service at it's finest.
...and the trains home were all fecked but that was signalling problems and not SASTA's fault.
Begrudgingly he printed me off another ticket. Given how much he had moaned I expected this to be a long and complex process. It took him less than 30 seconds to type in the reference, find the details and print off a ticket - he had spent longer moaning that it took to do the job. Customer service at it's finest.
...and the trains home were all fecked but that was signalling problems and not SASTA's fault.
kevo
Well-known member
- Mar 8, 2008
- 9,119
Not sure whether it has been covered in this thread yet, but has anyone used Southern's new website for buying tickets? Honestly, it's one of the worst experiences I've ever had on the internet... incredibly confusing and un-user friendly, only shows single tickets even when you want to buy a return, and for some reason fills the screen with a massive route map (yes, I know where Brighton and Haywards Heath are, thanks - why do I need a MAP?!). I gave up the last time I tried to use it after spending about 15 minutes trying to work out how to buy a simple off-peak return, and went on trainline.com instead (annoying, because they add a surcharge). Needless to say, the old site worked just fine. Absolute shambles.
It's toliet, used it once - never again.
I use this one https://www.buytickets.eastmidlandstrains.co.uk/advancedsearch.aspx (no fees)
Beach Hut
Brighton Bhuna Boy
thedonkeycentrehalf
Retired
- Jul 7, 2003
- 8,647
After several attempts, I finally worked out yesterday how to get a return ticket. When you select the return journey date and time there is another check box above the date that you have to select to say you want a return. Obviously filling in the date and time is not sufficient!
kevo
Well-known member
- Mar 8, 2008
- 9,119
Thanks -- I couldn't work it out at all!
Beach Hut
Brighton Bhuna Boy
A fine example of when you move away from what worked it goes pear shaped
studio150
Well-known member
Totally agree absolute rubbish.
I assume that I have missed some announcement but putting in London Victoria for a weekday only brings up London Terminal tickets which were always a few £s more and no option just to buy for Victoria.
I gave a key card and last time I looked to buy a ticket on the new site I ended up with a collect on departure paper ticket.
Shambles
I travelled to Hamburg yesterday afternoon, returning to Berlin today, on the ICE service. The Merlot wasn't quite to my liking, was a bit tart. And I noticed on the handy free internet progress page the train, at one point on its 90 minute non-stop service, was a minute behind schedule. And is two restaurant cars, a seated restaurant area and a standing and seated bar is surely excessive? cArNaGe
Ernest
Stupid IDIOT
Quality organisation at Brighton tonight, I expect they will blame this on striking conductors
http://www.juicebrighton.com/news/brighton-news/1977058/chaos-at-brighton-train-station/
http://www.juicebrighton.com/news/brighton-news/1977058/chaos-at-brighton-train-station/
Superseagull
Well-known member
- Jul 8, 2003
- 2,121
It was not much better for a time on Sat evening. At least the trains up to London are generally quite long so they can shift quite a few people if they were organised about it. Then again this is Southern!
The Albion Roar
97.2FM
"Due to the hot weather and numerous events taking place in the area, Brighton experienced large volumes of visitors this weekend. With a high influx of passengers returning home from Brighton station this evening measures were put in place to ensure the safety of our customers which resulted in overcrowding on the concourse. Services ran as scheduled and in order to elevate crowding on board our trains first class was declassified on some services."
Because no-one foresaw many hundreds, possibly thousands, of extra people visiting the city on a hot day. An embarrassment to the city.
Meanwhile, it's interesting they're trying to elevate crowding. How are they going to alleviate those issues?
Because no-one foresaw many hundreds, possibly thousands, of extra people visiting the city on a hot day. An embarrassment to the city.
Meanwhile, it's interesting they're trying to elevate crowding. How are they going to alleviate those issues?
Ernest
Stupid IDIOT
Make people travel in luggage racks or on the roof that should ELEVATE them
Weatherman
New member
- Jun 10, 2008
- 323
If they'd shut the gates people would have gone ballistic as well. The problem is all these people come down over a long period during the day but all want to go back at roughly the same time.. For some reason as soon as the sun's out thousands want to come down to this scruffy dump and with a ballooning population scenes like yesterday will become the norm.