Virgin Trains!

Savvy_Sue

No, not for their train service, but for their customer service when it all goes pear-shaped ...

DS2 recently went from Bristol to Birmingham without incident, but was delayed for several hours on the way back because of a broken down train blocking the line ahead.

By the time I picked him up, I was just so relieved it wasn't any later we just went home and I thought no more about it, until ...

a few days later we had a letter from Virgin Trains, apologising for the delay, explaining why it had taken so long to resolve, and ...

OFFERING A FULL REFUND FOR BOTH JOURNIES!

The only snag was that we had to send them the tickets, and of course he'd thrown the outward part away and had to rescue the return part from the waste paper basket. But I printed off our email confirmation, sent it off with the ticket we could find, and within a week had a cheque for the full cost of his journey!

:j

Let_Robinson_Sing

Nice one, well done. I am in the process of complaining again after another !!!!e journey from Bournemouth - Preston

A_Nice_Englishman

It is part of the National Conditions of Carriage (the contract between train operating companies and passengers) that compensation has to be paid if you are more than an hour late. The amount varies, but most companies will pay more than the minimum, as you have found.

You normally have to get a form from the staff on the train or the ticket office and send it off with your tickets to claim so brownie points to Virgin Trains for taking the initiative and contacting you themselves.

Few people seem to know this so perhaps a Sticky would be approriate?

Savvy_Sue

I think I did sort of know that you could claim compensation, but we so rarely travel by train that it wasn't top of my list of things to do after DS2 finally arrived! As you say, Brownie points to Virgin for contacting us. Which of course they could only do because I'd booked online and had the tickets posted to us!

A_Nice_Englishman

I guess the train companies don't want to publicise it more than they have to.

Wouldn't it be refreshing to hear an announcement "xxxx Trains apologise for the late running of thus service. May we remind passengers to collect their claim forms from the ticket office" ?

RedOnRed

They only gave me a £30 refund recently for an appalling journey back from Glasgow to Milton Keynes recently.

parkemitch

Was this on a saturday by any chance as I was at new street station then and there was updates on this service like every 2 minutes lol becuause of this reason.

RedOnRed

parkemitch wrote:

Was this on a saturday by any chance as I was at new street station then and there was updates on this service like every 2 minutes lol becuause of this reason.

It was on a Saturday but early June.

We travelled first class as a special treat return to Glasgow and on the way up on the Friday it was great. Coming back on the Saturday it was a different story!

Apparently they have a two tier service with first class. Monday - Friday you get great first class service but there isn't any during the weekends. You have to walk a mile to get to the snack carriage to get some disgusting meal pack. Also the toilets were blocked and our connecting train at B'ham New Street was cancelled due to all of the engineering works which go on at weekends.

I would never consider travelling "first class" with Virgin again at weekends.

parkemitch

Aghh ok lol.. weekends.. not good with virgin,. but first class should be fine ... the meal packs are disgusting lol.. but first class usually is quiet and nice seats lol