London Midland Delays

bacchants

So, my daily commute involves two London Midland trains with a change from New Street to Snow Hill in the middle.

In the last month or two, I would say about 80% of the trains I am catching are being delayed. Usually only about 3-4 minutes, but sometimes up to 15-20.

Now I know that if the delay is 30+ minutes I can claim for a refund, and for the occasions it has been that long I've sent off a form (still waiting to hear back).

However, is there any way to claim/complain about that fact that over the course of a week I am being delayed a considerable amount but in small chunks?

I've started to take photos of the boards every time there is a delay, although there are an awful lot of 'phantom' delays where the train is late but the board never updates.

I currently have no alternative to getting the train and I'm pretty peeved at paying through the nose for a slow, unreliable and packed service!

Emma_N

As a regular user of the Cross City line I feel your pain

The Delay Repay scheme is a farce as at the end of the day passengers fund the delay repayments.

Last night I was stuck at New Street for almost an hour due "emergency services attending an incident"

On Friday evening I was caught up in the chaos at New Street caused by "poor rail conditions".

I haven't had to travel today but "poor rail conditions" were being cited as the cause of delays this morning.

There is a local passenger group called Travelwatch West Midlands. They were involved in the lack of London Midlands train drivers fiasco last year. Personally I am planning on contacting Michael Fabricant the MP for Lichfield. Lichfield has recently been hit pretty badly by London Midland train cancellations and delays.

If you contact London Midland you can wait weeks for a generic reply. I once tried claiming for the total time I was delayed in an average week, they weren't interested.

Unfortunately I understand that London Midland recently had the francise renewed. Great!

bacchants

Ah yes I had to wait 45mins last Friday due to the 'poor rail conditions', and the friday before that it was something daft like 'intermittent electricity'.

I saw a poster the other day listing something like 90% of their trains ran on time. I was tempted to whip out a sharpie and correct it! Alas as I was already running late stopping to correct it would have made it worse!

I'll have a look into that group and I think I might try writing to my MP as well. Lately it's really been stressing me out as my work have commented on my erratic time keeping so I'm having to leave earlier than I should have to in order to get there vaguely on time! I really want to try and find some tangible way to try and get them to pull their freaking finger out!

Emma_N

In the past London Midland have had to verify the lateness of trains for people in danger of losing their jobs due to time keeping issues.

As you've probably learnt, getting an earlier train doesn't always make much difference. I'm travelling down to London tomorrow, and know that I'll have to make sure I leave enough time to factor in London Midland!

Unfortunately "on time" doesn't mean what people think it does when it comes to trains.

Have a look at this site https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proportion-of-trains-running-on-time

London Midland haven't been performing very well recently...

bacchants

Wow I've just read that doc, what a bunch of !!!!.
It makes me wonder why they bother with timetables at all, when they could just do "Next train in either 3 minutes or half an hour. Maybe".

Today my trains were actually on time (shocker), but I missed my train as my pass stopped working (again). So the rubbish guard wouldn't let me through until I replaced it, even when I said my train was due in 2 minutes. Plus that I had replaced it last Friday and it worked a grand total of one day.
None of the other guards seem to do it apart from this one guy. I grabbed a complaint form and got his name so I can do an official complaint for them to just ignore. I figure if I do it each time he makes me late maybe they will do something. Either that or I go staple the complaint form to his head!

Jeff_Bridges_hair

bacchants wrote: »

Ah yes I had to wait 45mins last Friday due to the 'poor rail conditions', and the friday before that it was something daft like 'intermittent electricity'.

Those poor rail conditions that you so deride actually lead to a train overshooting the platform at Lichfield by 400 yards - a scary prospect dont you think, not only for the driver who could not stop the train but also the passengers who were on it too. Or do you only care about yourself and your own journey?

And do you even know what a problem like 'Intermittent electricity' is or are you mouthing off? Given that both issues can be placed solely down to Network rail maybe giving LM a hard time about it is a bit harsh?

geordie_taxi

Give them grief on here;

https://twitter.com/LondonMidland

the more people complain on twitter about a shoddy service or bad attitude of rail staff the quick London Midland will hopefully sort it out. As twitter complaints either get sorted out by customer services or past on to the appropriate manager.

Elvisia

The problem is (and I speak as someone who uses London Midland in the South and I've missed some extremely important work events because of being stranded) that most of the problems are out of London Midland's control, and are because of the rail tracks which they don't control. I got caught up in signal failure recently (stuck outside Wembley in a packed train sat right next to a heater that was on full blast, slowly having a panic attack) but the driver did point out it was because of a crappy signal rather than his fault.

Sorry I've just realised that doesn't help at all, but maybe do contact MP/press/higher up in LM to see if the overall structure can be looked at?