National rail ignorant staff and bad service

Why should you get discounted rail travel from the job centre if you have a job?

Cpu2007 wrote: »

Hi everyone

I have a complain about the bad service of national rail; I know that probably there's nothing I can do about this issue but I thought to give it a try as there might be someone experienced on here who can give me an advice.

As some of you might be aware, there's a job centre railway card that entitles me for a discounted ticket, now the problem is that is has been almost a month and everytime I go an buy the ticket, the staff there doesn't know anytihng about it and takes a lot of time to sell me a ticket (10-20 mins) which is very frustrating as I've got late for work sometime, I've missed a few trains.

I can understand that at the beginning they might have no idea but it's been a few months since this railcard came out so I think it is fair to say that they should know about it.

In addition to this, not only the staff that sell tickets but also the insectors near the barrier (the ones that check your ticket before you get on the train) sometime stop me and say they don't know what kind of ticket is this, even though the railway card is shown next to the ticket.

I tried to be patient but after what happend today I decided to put a claim against them for the distress they've caused in term of delays, bad service in addition to the fact, irrelevant to the claim, that their trains are always late, never a place to sit and sometime also overcroded.

I was wondering if there's anything I can do about this.

Thank you

For your information, with the exception of a few major stations (mainly the London terminals plus places such as Birminghan New Street) National Rail does not operate any stations. Stations are operated by the Train Operation Company serving the station (where more than one does it is normally the one with the most services).

It appears that some Job Centres are also unaware of this card (see the link below for a page from a rail forum). I have posted the link because it contains a page from a rail industry manual detailing how tickets using this rail card should be processed and I thought that might be useful to you.

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=56881

I do, however, have one question. This railcard can be issued to those who meet the eligibility criteria primarily to assist in them finding a job. I am curious therefore about your comment that failings at stations have led to you being "late for work". While I do know that the card can run for up to three months after an individual finds employment, would you be completely surprised that some staff may be confused that someone "going to work" is using a card primarily aimed at the unemployed?

With respect to your last paragraph, you have zero comeback for late trains (unless delay-repay is engaged - normally over an hour delay), crowding or inability to get a seat. See that National Railway Conditions of Carriage which define the agreement between yourself and the TOCs.

I hope this is helpful, particular post 5 of the link.

It's very unlikely that the travel centre or the barrier examiners are National Rail (or Network Rail) staff. You need to identify which train operating company they work for, and complain there. Even in Network Rail managed stations, a TOC will usually have the contract to run the travel centre.

If you are in London you could print off the relevant page from TfL website. If in the Southern Railway area, this. Your Jobcentre Advisor should also have given you a copy of the ATOC Fact Sheet for the railcard when you received it.

Which Manchester station? Network Rail (note - not National Rail) manage Piccadilly but not Victoria, Deansgate or Oxford Road. As someone else said, you need to address your complaint to the right company.

With regards to being stopped because you showed your ticket 'to' Manchester in the afternoon when you wanted to travel 'from' Manchester, I'm afraid you did show the wrong ticket so they were right to question it. Whilst the ticket said 'return' there was no guarantee that this was your own ticket, you could have found somebody else's discarded 'to' ticket from that morning and tried to pass it off as your own.