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Virgin Trains are bunch of con artists IMHO. Be warned!
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Silent_Mule wrote: »:embarasse Well, I got that wrong. Thanks for the update. I feel sure that ZaNu Laour had something to do with it but am happy to stand corrected.
That's a common feeling wherever incompetence is found :rolleyes:, but on this occasion they actually had nothing to do with it. The orcats computer system is a hangover from BR (hence the ridiculously stupid anagram); on privatisation the Tories decided it would be the simplest way to divide up the cash without everyone having to buy operator-specific tickets every time they travelled. Interestingly, it's actually quoted by supporters of anarchy (the 'real' anarchy, rather than its common meaning) as an example of how civilised non-dictatorial agreements can work!0 -
I have never had a problem with virgin and infact choose them to travel by both air and trains as they are the best service i have traveled with and do anything possible to travel with them.£27.76/£2018 in 20180
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Yes
Try turning up without your credit card because it's been lost in New York. Oh, and take umpteen different forms of Id - more than the border and immigration bods need. You'll see a different side. Never had a problem with the staff on the actual trains though.I have never had a problem with virgin and infact choose them to travel by both air and trains as they are the best service i have traveled with and do anything possible to travel with them.0 -
YesSo are you going to challenge this in court now?0
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Yes
I am consulting with m'learned friends and will take their advice. May try getting VT to cough one more time first.thescouselander wrote: »So are you going to challenge this in court now?0 -
I have read through this thread with interest, and having worked in this specific area for as long as I have, I must say that I still cannot for the life of me understand why so many people always jump in, claiming that the rail company are always at fault in some way. Before I say anything else, that is not a defence of Virgin or any other rail company.
Having said that, I am certain that this case could have been handled much better and there are clearly things that could have been done to alleviate all the unnecessary confrontation and associated stress for everyone involved.
Yes, Moonrakerz, the customer is made aware of the terms & conditions at the time of purchase and Silent Mules' acceptance of those terms makes the contract binding on both parties. I too share the scepticism that is apparent in Moonrakerz reply, but let us assume that everything happened exactly as Silent Mule has said.
Sadly, even if we don't like the conditions and think they are unfair, these ticketing conditions have been 'tried & tested' so many times now and no-one has yet succeeded in getting them changed.
On the point of the £360 fare being charged, that is the walk-up fare for the journey, whereas the £95.50 would have been the discounted fare obtained by advance booking. I'm not going to debate the amounts, but will say that I personally believe that many walk-up fares are very much too high.
On Silent Mules' point 25, no matter that any profanity was not directed at anyone in particular, Railways Byelaws are a very powerful tool and recent guidelines have made clear that efforts will be made to tackle offensive and anti-social behaviour, including swearing. Sometimes, we get the standard of service that our own behaviour deserves.
Like it or not, it is the traveller who is unable to keep his part of the bargain and harsh as it may seem, those are the facts. In this situation, the rail company has kept their part of that bargain, they had a train available for use by the traveller on production of the card to pay for the ticket. The rail company can hardly be held responsible for the traveller losing the card.
I suggest that Virgin staff could have allowed Silent Mule to travel without a valid ticket, by confirming all of his details and taking copies of his identification and then checking out all of his claim later. This could have been achieved by asking Silent Mule to sign for acceptance of a note giving him 'permission to travel', conditional upon him paying any fare due and any costs that they incurred or, face prosecution if it was later found that his story was false.
National Rail Conditions of Carriage make this an acceptable procedure because they make clear that a traveller may be on a train without a ticket if he has been given authority by an authorised person. No rail staff are obliged to simply accept the travellers' word, so a brief note would have sorted this.
It has to be stressed that the train operator is never under any obligation to do this, but when a genuine difficulty is encountered it might save much bad feeling all around and I know from experience that this process is sometimes applied.
It seems the traveller would have three choices:
1. Buy a new ticket and complain later
2. Suggest the procedure I have outlined above, comply with every step in this with good grace and get a note authorising your travel so that you are not out of pocket
3. Stand and shout, keep arguing and swearing, stress your own importance, miss the train or worse.
Now here's the main stumbling block in most cases. I have to say that in my 30 year experience, people often do not react in a reasonable manner when faced with an immediate difficulty for which they were unprepared.
What happens is they begin shouting, swearing and letting all and sundry know how important they are. The result is that they may get poorer customer service than they otherwise would, because staff who are being abused will quite often not go out of their way to do something above and beyond the call of duty that might help.
I DO NOT CONDONE THAT KIND OF ACTION BY CUSTOMER SERVICE STAFF, but I suggest we all might be able to understand it. I'd rather not hear the usual clap-trap about 'professionalism' unless you have, and can also publish for us all to see, a sworn statement signed by God that attests to your saintliness. We all lose it occasionally, it is a human trait.
Later, realising their mistake, many people seek to blame others and often try to make light of the impact of their own actions on their situation.0 -
NoNow here's the main stumbling block in most cases. I have to say that in my 30 year experience, people often do not react in a reasonable manner when faced with am immediate difficulty for which they were unprepared.
What happens is they begin shouting, swearing and letting all and sundry know how important they are. The result is that they may get poorer customer service than they otherwise would, because staff who are being abused will quite often not go out of their way to do something above and beyond the call of duty that might help.
Later, realising their mistake, many people seek to blame others and often try to make light of the impact of their own actions on their situation.
Could not agree more with that. I am talking generally, not in specific response to the OP.0 -
Are you saying that the specific terms and conditions the OP fell foul of have been tested in court? and that the outcome was favourable to the company?
I am talking about the ID issue,and wondering what other additional forms of ID (other than passport,ticket print out,statement relating to CC card used)would cause the the staff to use their stated "discretion".0 -
YesWell, first of all, thanks for taking the time to give such a considered reply. I have no reason to doubt your credentials (i.e. 30 years experience in this area) but I think I shoudl - as the OP - just comment on your comments, if you will.
on a technicality, acceptance of terms and conditions of a contract does not necessarily make that contract binding on either party... much has been said here (and on other forums) about Unfair Contract Terms Act, et al. I've no desire to restate what's already been said, however.I have read through this thread with interest, and having worked in this specific area for as long as I have, I must say that I still cannot for the life of me understand why so many people always jump in, claiming that the rail company are always at fault in some way. Before I say anything else, that is not a defence of Virgin or any other rail company.
Having said that, I am certain that this case could have been handled much better and there are clearly things that could have been done to alleviate all the unnecessary confrontation and associated stress for everyone involved.
Yes, Moonrakerz, the customer is made aware of the terms & conditions at the time of purchase and Silent Mules' acceptance of those terms makes the contract binding on both parties.
It did... but to paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies, I suppose I would say that, wouldn't I?I too share the scepticism that is apparent in Moonrakerz reply, but let us assume that everything happened exactly as Silent Mule has said.
If you know of any specific cases it would be great to have them quoted as it would help greatly tobe able to look these up and see what exactly was said / decided in court.Sadly, even if we don't like the conditions and think they are unfair, these ticketing conditions have been 'tried & tested' so many times now and no-one has yet succeeded in getting them changed.
I would agree with this... I also object to the train company telling me - the day before, when the discount fare was still available - to go to the station and present my case there. That could be consrtued as deliberately placing the passenger in a position of being unable to re-book using the cheaper fare.On the point of the £360 fare being charged, that is the walk-up fare for the journey, whereas the £95.50 would have been the discounted fare obtained by advance booking. I'm not going to debate the amounts, but will say that I personally believe that many walk-up fares are very much too high.
I really wish I'd never mentioned this point. But, so that everyone is clear, I turned to my colleage and said to him - not anyone else - this is turning in to a f***ing nightmare. I have stressed before, and will continue to assert, that I did not raise my voice, nor did I at any point direct any profaity at the station (or any other) staff.On Silent Mules' point 25, no matter that any profanity was not directed at anyone in particular, Railways Byelaws are a very powerful tool and recent guidelines have made clear that efforts will be made to tackle offensive and anti-social behaviour, including swearing. Sometimes, we get the standard of service that our own behaviour deserves.
Again, you cannot place an obligation on someone that that person cannot fulfil, IMHO, but more later...Like it or not, it is the traveller who is unable to keep his part of the bargain
Did you mean this? After all, the ticket had actually been paid for...and harsh as it may seem, those are the facts. In this situation, the rail company has kept their part of that bargain, they had a train available for use by the traveller on production of the card to pay for the ticket.
True... but UK contract law actually recoginse a credit card bill as being evidence enough. See this link for details. For example, if you buy a product from a shop and it is found to be faulty you do not have to produce a receipt. In UK contract law, a credit card statement is enough evidence that you purchased the item. Even Virgin Trains don't make the claim that having the card is for proof of payment. They say it is to guard against fraudulent use of the ticket (i.e. that the person who paid for the ticket is the person who bought the ticket). I do think this is a case where common sense could have prevailed (your next point, I think).The rail company can hardly be held responsible for the traveller losing the card.
I did ask the chap at Euston for authority to travel and was denied this.I suggest that Virgin staff could have allowed Silent Mule to travel without a valid ticket, by confirming all of his details and taking copies of his identification and then checking out all of his claim later. This could have been achieved by asking Silent Mule to sign for acceptance of a note giving him 'permission to travel', conditional upon him paying any fare due and any costs that they incurred or, face prosecution if it was later found that his story was false.
This was the only choice outlined to me on the day - though I am now much more familiar with NCC than I was.National Rail Conditions of Carriage make this an acceptable procedure because they make clear that a traveller may be on a train without a ticket if he has been given authority by an authorised person. No rail staff are obliged to simply accept the travellers' word, so a brief note would have sorted this.
It has to be stressed that the train operator is never under any obligation to do this, but when a genuine difficulty is encountered it might save much bad feeling all around and I know from experience that this process is sometimes applied.
It seems the traveller would have three choices:
1. Buy a new ticket and complain later
I would gladly have suggested this, had I known that it was part of the NCC but I didn't, so didn't.2. Suggest the procedure I have outlined above, comply with every step in this with good grace and get a note authorising your travel so that you are not out of pocket
OK... here I feel a little aggrieved. Why? Well, because the implication is that I stood and shouted and swore at the counter staff, kept going on about how important I was, and so on. And, the truth is simply not like that. Let me - once again - answer these points, because it is, I feel, very important to be clear:3. Stand and shout, keep arguing and swearing, stress your own importance, miss the train or worse.
a) Did I stand and shout? Not at all. Not once did I raise my voice. I spent over 30 minutes asking whether the either of them could validate my ticket for travel and was simply presented with the same line over and over again... no hint at anything else. Now, with the first bloke I understand it. He was probably quite junior and felt (I imagine) that he didn't have the sort of authority to act in a discretional way. Fair enough. So, he got the station supervisor. The frustration (for me) came after several minutes of trying to persuade this gentleman that I was me, etc...
b) Keep arguing and swearing? Well yes and no. I kept trying to restate my position in different ways but I wasn't being beligerent. And did I swear? Yes, once, to a colleague, in a normal voice, etc as has been stated previously ad infinitum. Now, I must say that I think it makes sense to try and put your case in more than one way if you have no luck at the beginning... i.e. try and exhaust all avenues.
c) Did I stress my own importance? I would argue that I have never done that. Not even here. In the station I never once mentioned my job, etc. I think/hope I have made that abudantly clear. I did mention my job here (and gawd knows I wish I hadn't for all the misundertanding it seems to have caused). The reason I mentioned my job is, I hope, really very simple. In my position I have to interact with customers every day of my life. It is often the case that they forget something or there's a delay in getting x or y to me / the people who work for me. My point is this: if I simply quoted the contract details to my clients and said "you're in breach because you haven't done 'x'", I would lose customers hand over fist and I could call myself anything I liked at that point but it would be meaningless because I would have no clients and a stack of business cards that would have value only as firelighters. The point is that firms should work with their customers. Now, I take the flip side too - an agreesive, unpleasant customer, is not one I would want to necessarily keep around. When I started out I worked in a camera shop and the clients were sometimes really nice, sometimes really very unpleasant. So, I like to think I know how to treat people who work in roles that are customer facing (i.e. politely). And this is all I really want to say on this particular point as I think it is really a distraction from the main thread of this post.
A tough one that... I do have one from Satan saying I'm not welcome in Hell. Will that do?Now here's the main stumbling block in most cases. I have to say that in my 30 year experience, people often do not react in a reasonable manner when faced with an immediate difficulty for which they were unprepared.
What happens is they begin shouting, swearing and letting all and sundry know how important they are. The result is that they may get poorer customer service than they otherwise would, because staff who are being abused will quite often not go out of their way to do something above and beyond the call of duty that might help.
I DO NOT CONDONE THAT KIND OF ACTION BY CUSTOMER SERVICE STAFF, but I suggest we all might be able to understand it. I'd rather not hear the usual clap-trap about 'professionalism' unless you have, and can also publish for us all to see, a sworn statement signed by God that attests to your saintliness.
Seriously, yes, by the end I was annoyed. So I asked for the Station Manager's name (which he gave me) and informed him that I would be making a complaint about how unhelpful he had been. That was at he very end of the whole transaction. The next thing I did was to walk away (before coming back again 2 - 3 minutes later to pick up the other ticket that the machine wouldn't dispense and which they didn't ask for a credit card for, just the reference code.
May be so... I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it on how I behaved, unless this ever makes it to court, as I do have one witness who is fully prepared to testify on my behalf that at no time was I rude or offensive to the staff. Anyway, even if I didn't I suspect there is CCTV in use at the station which ought to confirm matters (though that will depend on whether there is sound, the angle of dangle of the camera, and whether the tapes even still exist).We all lose it occasionally, it is a human trait.
Later, realising their mistake, many people seek to blame others and often try to make light of the impact of their own actions on their situation.0 -
NoSilent_Mule wrote: »True... but UK contract law actually recoginse a credit card bill as being evidence enough. See this link for details. For example, if you buy a product from a shop and it is found to be faulty you do not have to produce a receipt. In UK contract law, a credit card statement is enough evidence that you purchased the item. Even Virgin Trains don't make the claim that having the card is for proof of payment. They say it is to guard against fraudulent use of the ticket (i.e. that the person who paid for the ticket is the person who bought the ticket). I do think this is a case where common sense could have prevailed (your next point, I think).
Proof or purchase does not need even need to be a statement (or anything else mentioned in the link provided). The link deals with your rights to a refund on a faulty product (NOT a service). The service you paid for was provided (the train ran). That is a very important but subtle difference.May be so... I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it on how I behaved, unless this ever makes it to court, as I do have one witness who is fully prepared to testify on my behalf that at no time was I rude or offensive to the staff. Anyway, even if I didn't I suspect there is CCTV in use at the station which ought to confirm matters (though that will depend on whether there is sound, the angle of dangle of the camera, and whether the tapes even still exist).
The CCTV will be long gone by now, unless they kept a copy because they felt your behaviour was not appropiate (which I assume they wouldn't have from what you say). If it went to court, I suspect they have more witnesses than you. The original person, the supervisor, the person in the next booth/desk etc etc.
I really do think you need to stop playing the big man and do what has been suggested - accept that there is no fault on their part other than, what appears to be deliberatly, not offering to sell you a single ticket. Accept their cheque, claim on the credit card for the other and move on. If you really are the "CEO of a multi national company" then time is money right? :rolleyes:0
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