Well, that was helpful

In response to my letter, my train company apparently forwarded my letter to a different train company. I don't know why, but they did. I received a voicemail from the second train company today requesting the dates of travel (which were included with my original letter), a copy of my season ticket (sent with the original letter) and asking me to call back. The guy didn't leave a number. That's some stellar customer service to offer somebody already having problems with the company. Well done, you!

Train theatre

Ok, train company. Can we just stop pretending now? Frankly, the storyline that the evening train is going to arrive at 18:41 is simply not believable. You might as well just be honest and say that you have absolutely no idea when the damned thing is likely to arrive. Not enamored with the theatre metaphor? Let's try science instead.

If my students submit a report with statistics, it is expected that the numbers include a standard error of the mean (usually indicated by +/-). In your case, the arrival time is always accompanied by a +. This indicates that you are actually misrepresenting the true time at which the train arrives.

In the last few weeks*, my T,W,Th, Fri journeys have gone something like this:

25/10 14 mins late
26/10 24 mins late
27/10 on time (anomalous)
28/10 22 mins late (on hour earlier train)
1/11 8 mins late
8/11 10 mins late (am train)
9/11 30 mins late (this was on 17:22 start, which involved 2 delays and a sprint to have doors slammed in my face on connection)
10/11 29 minutes late
11/11 ~10 mins late (I'd stopped caring by end of week)
15/11 I forgot to look
16/11 trains *CANCELLED* after waiting for 2 hours at the station, Train Buddy drove us. (More on this in a forthcoming post).
17/11 10 mins late
18/11 morning train 11 late (and short 2 carriages), evening train 14 minutes and counting as I type.

*missing dates indicate days on which I was so fed up that I arranged to work from home.

Let's hope next week is better. Perhaps we might aim for 1-2 days of on-time service before December, when we can fully expect snow or leaves to shut the rails down altogether.

-Apologies to my dear readers for the complete lack of humor lately. I'm too annoyed and tired to even try to find the funny in this.

Betcha I don't get a response

There's no compensation for delays of less than 30 minutes, and the most compensation I've ever received for anything has been a whopping £9. However, I'm fed up and have sent the following letter, along with the standard claim form:


Dear Customer Relations,

Please find the enclosed Delay Repay form. Although the 17:22 was technically only delayed by about 10 minutes, it meant that despite sprinting across Manchester Piccadilly I missed my connection to Sheffield (arriving in time for the doors to slam shut in my face). The next train was not for another 25 minutes and was also delayed by about 8 minutes. I arrived a full 31 minutes after I should have done, and was unable to work productively during the trip, which is why I opt to take the train rather than driving in the first place.

This was actually the 6th train of 9 evening journeys that has arrived late in the last couple of weeks. Sometimes it’s only a matter of 7-15 minutes, but it’s enough to ensure that I miss buses, evening appointments and generally arrive home frustrated and exhausted nearly every night. None of these journeys individually adds up to a compensable delay; however, cumulatively it has added well over an hour of inconvenience to my life in the last week alone.

Quite often, the train is crushed to standing room only and overheated. Why on earth there are only two carriages on a train that goes through 3 of the largest cities in the North during rush hour is utterly incomprehensible.

I pay an extortionate amount of money –over £4500- for this service each year, and it is quite frankly just not good enough. I would appreciate it if only as a token gesture the company would a) acknowledge the issues I have raised in this letter and b) offer some sort of meaningful compensation for the prolonged torture that has become my daily commute.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,


Constance
Disgruntled season ticket holder

Today went like this...

4.5 hours sleep, alarm in the dark at 4:45 am. Out the door at 5:30. Arrive at work, sun barely up. Work straight through with out food or bathroom break until it's dark again. Miss train. Next train gets stuck. Sprint for connection and miss it. Wait for next train. That train is delayed. Bus smells of feet. Walk in door just shy of 15 hours after leaving. Miss seeing my kid awake at today. Hoping for a glass of wine and an episode of The Wire before I go to sleep and do it all again tomorrow.

Double the Pleasure

Somehow, I've had the pleasure of sitting with the office workers from hell (OWFH) *twice* today. They have featured in the blog before. This morning, there was some sort of emergency call coming out of the driver's cabin requesting assistance for a seriously ill driver impacting the route. We couldn't tell whether it was regarding our driver/line or not, because OWFH wouldnt shut the hell up long enough to hear what was being said. Apparently, this potentially grave situation was not as important as them prattling on about women they knew who had been pregnant and their maternity leave. I've personally heard them have this exact conversation at least 4 times in the past, so it wasn't exactly compelling. Luckily, Train Buddy was there to point out interesting stories in the Metro during our brief delay. Apparently it wasn't our driver, but hopefully whoever it was is alright.

This evening, they've spent 40 minutes being horrible about some woman that they work with who is constantly miserable. I bet the poor thing is miserable because of these vapid, cruel women. I'm wedged in next to Strongbow Guy and am seriously considering asking for a swig of his cider just to make this less painful. Oh wait. He's downed both cans already.

Business as usual

Stupid pointless day, followed by one cancelled train and a delayed one with no announcement. At the moment, it's looking like I'll be delayed by an hour and 20 minutes, not counting any knock-on effects for catching the night bus. I think East Midlands should also compensate me for the additional 30 minutes I'll have to spend dealing with the reimbursement claim tomorrow.

Really sad

It is really, really hot in here. The train has been stuck in a tunnel for over 40 minutes now, and the conductor has a very faint grasp of the English language. Despite two announcements, we are none the wiser since we can't understand a damn word over the tannoy. There is no signal, so this post will appear when the train emerges from the blackness.

From the other end of the carriage has been an incessant barrage of drunken noise. The offenders have just staggered down the aisle. Guess who? Two of the 3 cider drinkers from this morning. They haven't stopped drinking in the interim, by the look of it. No sign of the kid (who was apparently a boy, but just bedecked with a long ponytail in a purple elastic). Perhaps somebody else took pity on him and stole him. I bottled it at the last minute. May the little guy have been snagged by a benevolent rescuer.

Helpful as always

Today East Midlands Trains has really outdone themselves. I'm travelling for the sad occasion of visiting a friend receiving palliative care. What should be a time for quiet contemplation has now turned into a clusterfuck typical of EMT.

The train was delayed over the Pennines with no explanation, causing a missed connection. The app on my phone showed two other trains departing shortly thereafter that would get me to my destination, but there were no departures boards on the platform. I ran to the lobby to check the board, only to find that the two trains weren't even listed. The guy at the ticket desk tried to speak to me as though I was unable to read a timetable, and denied that the changeover on the Internet didn't match the one in reality. Thankfully, a woman with two kids behind me in the queue piped up that she had the same problem. He decided to be more helpful after that.

I'm en route now, with a total of 3 changes and nearly 40 minutes delay. Thank goodness I was prepared for such an inevitability. I made sure to leave 2 hours before I needed to just so I wouldn't miss visiting hours if the train was late.

Now I'm annoyed and flustered from all of the hustling between platforms and the lobby to get information. Maybe I should thank them for the distraction. Or not.

Internship

I think it would be useful for me to do an internship with the train company so I can better understand what the hell is going on. There seem to be some things that seem rather simple to figure out, but must be very complicated behind the scenes.

I was running late this morning because I decided that caffeine was more important than anything else I had going today, so I missed my train by about a minute. That meant I had to take the next train with the mad dash changeover.

I went running through the station to find that my connecting train was running 5 minutes late. No problem. But, as I was looking at the departures board, it became evident that there was no way my train would arrive at that time, because there was one departing a minute before it on the same platform. About 2 minutes later, the delay and expected time changed to an 11 minute delay. But, the same problem was going to happen with another train, and then the next one after that. Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but it seems evident that there was never any chance that my delayed train was ever going to arrive at platform 14 only 5 minutes late when there were 3 others in the way. It eventually left 24 minutes late, and I'm guessing that they knew that at the outset. If they'd have just said that, I could have at least gone to get another coffee instead of freezing my butt off on the platform for 26 minutes.

Epic

Train Buddy found this and shared it: <http://www.mentalcrumble.com/blog/2011/6/9/the-lost-swt-1830hrs-train-from-waterloo-to-portsmouth.html> http://www.mentalcrumble.com/blog/2011/6/9/the-lost-swt-1830hrs-train-from-waterloo-to-portsmouth.html

Not sure even my worst journey has stacked up against this. Suicide and snow days have come close, but there wasn't a dance floor.

Or your money back

I filled in 4 claim forms for delayed and cancelled trains. I got 4 identical letters stating that the trains had not been delayed by more than 2 hours. Apparently, East Midlands Trains operates outside the normal space-time continuum. They sent me 4 vouchers at £9 each for future journeys. Oh good. So next year when my season pass expires, I can pay for 75% of another late-running service.

The train is late due to.

Was hoping to be snowed in today, but no such luck. I dragged myself down to the station despite being ill, only to find that the train was delayed. The announcement lady kept saying, "We apologise for the delay to this service, which is due to." Even the robotic voice has given up trying to explain.

The estimated delay time kept increasing by 2-3 minutes until the train eventually rocked up (with only two carriages) 23 minutes late. There was a last-minute platform change, causing Train Buddy and I to go running up and down several flights of stairs and collapsing into the last two available seats just before the doors closed. Nothing like getting to the station 15 minutes early and then having to run for the train 40 minutes later.

Unfortunately for us, the last two seats were in the refrigerator compartment. Er, I mean the jumpseats in the unheated bit between the two carriages. They do have the added bonus of being about 2 feet from the honking loo.

We asked the conductor why the train was delayed, and he said it was because the train was supposed to be 4 carriages, but the brakes on the last two got stuck and they had to be removed. Awesome.

Special guest post

This morning we have a special guest post courtesy of Train Buddy. After two years of begging him to share his humorous musings on our often unfunny journeys, he has finally relented and decided to share them with everyone else. This is his take on the very same journey that I posted on earlier, but from another squished seat farther down the carriage. Enjoy! 

I really dislike EMT, and especcially this journey time. Those were pure weasel words. 
We apologise for late running of this service...due to being behind a stopping service. 
We apologise for crowding...due to unit failure.
It should've been: 
"We apologise for slapping the same BUSTED-ASS unit into service, and being completely bowled over by its unexpected internal COMBUSTION. We apologise that being forced to use the remaining working carriages (half that required) has resulted in PEOPLE PATE. That this might delay the FREE FLOW of people was beyond our comprehension. We apologise that far from being a RANDOM occurance, our general INEPTITUDE has delayed our progress such that we fell behind the slower STOPPING train and we are now free to be even LATER."   

Oh dear

After last night's debacle in which I arrived at the station at 4:30 but didn't actually get through the door until after 9, I was tired and mad. That was until I spoke to Train Buddy. It was a minor annoyance compared to his tribulations.

Poor guy has had so many cancellations and delays this week that he is actually unsure what time zone he's in, without actually having left the country. He's had 3 (or is it 4? - he lost count) days this week in which his train has either been cancelled or delayed. And when the train is delayed, the driver then has to take a 20 minute dinner break. It has happened so frequently that his patient wife may begin to question the veracity of his late arrivals home. I wonder if East Midlands has a homewrecker compensation fund?

Cancellations

I recently was told by East Midlands that I couldn't receive reimbursements for cancelled trains during the course of my season pass due to delayed or cancelled trains without specific dates. Luckily for them, I've been keeping track on the handy blogosphere.

I'm currently sitting in a terrible station pub so I can use their plug socket after 2 cancelled trains. The third one is delayed by 20 minutes already, which doesn't bode well for it actually going. If I'm lucky, I'll be getting home at 9pm, only to turn around and leave again at 6:45am.

So far this delay has cost me £16: a sandwich and a coffee because I'll miss dinner, and now a pint for the sake of a plug for my phone. I also had to buy an £8 book because I've been stuck in the station for 2 hours and my laptop battery won't hold out for the whole journey. And I won't get to tuck my daughter in again.

Document that, East Midlands.

Death and destruction

Another fatality. Another interminable delay. Don't be so selfish if you're going to off yourself.

Ruined my perfect record

So, the train showed up 20 minutes late. Old passengers alighted, new passengers boarded. I managed to lose two chatty guys that were hitting on me without seeming rude. Everyone got comfy, put their stuff away and began the elaborate procedure of trying to be polite while also conveying that they want to be left alone.

Then, they announce that everyone had to get off again. Was it because of a problem? A train fault perhaps? Who knows. But 38 minutes later we are finally chugging along.

And to think that I hadn't used the F-word all day. There's that record shot, then.

Same old Friday

This is where my train should be. This is where my train should have been 10 minutes ago. This is the platform where 85 people are standing, with no announcement about delays or cancellations. Awesome, East Midlands once again.

Normalcy

After having been away for two weeks on business, all I want to do is
get home and hug my family. I've been looking forward to the normalcy
of home.

Due to ill-scheduled flights, I'm going to miss the first half of
England's last group stage match of the World Cup. I rush across the
whole of Manchester airport to get to the station, only to find that
my train has been, wait for it... Yes, you guessed it. Cancelled. So,
I get to sit in a sweaty platform cafe and wait for an hour for a
train instead of hugs and miss the match. I did say I was craving normalcy.

Another one

Only a week after the last train cancellation, I just received an SMS alert that my evening train has been cancelled today. Luckily, it came in just as I was about to pack up. Goody. Another night that I can't tuck my little one in bed because of a signalling failure. So glad I pay 15% of my annual earnings for this. C'mon, East Midlands. Get it together.