London Midland TERRIBLE

dj_ad1200 wrote: »

I bought the great escape London Midland deal to go from Liverpool to London.

I upgraded to First Class for the extra £10.

What a waste of money that was !!

1. The website is VERY misleading as I was under the impression I could use the Virgin train. Obviously I know that the companies are separate but on the London Midland website it gives the Virgin trains timetable.

(im going with Virgin next time, it's cheaper with the farefinder !!!)

You will also find that on the Virgin website it gives the London Midland trains timetable!

I find this quite strange, I live in Scotland but stay with family in Milton Keynes a few times a year to travel down to London, as I can never get a decent price for the Virgin trains from Glasgow.
I have used LM twice this year, once in June when I got the train from MK to Euston at about 5.30am wasn't let down, train ran on time, got to Euston slightly early in fact, I returned later that night, no problem.
I used the Great Escape on Sunday to do the same trip to go see the NFL at Wembley, again no problems at all, in fact we have even discussed using MK as a base for a holiday next year, as we can literally visit all our different family members from there, and reachable on the LM line's from Milton Keynes.

As with any offer you have to read the terms and conditions, I did, I also used the Great Escape for tickets last year for the NFL. Oh and I also took the wife and kids to London on Saturday but on their Group Save ticket which was £40 for all four of us for a Day Travelcard including the Tube, considering the normal price for one adult is about £25.

In fairness with other problems on the line, missed connections etc etc you have had a miserable day out, but taking it all out on London Midland isn't really fair.

I once won a competition for free flights from Glasgow Prestwick to London Stanstead, there was train line works between Stanstead and London on the way back, everyone was on the phone calling the airport, we turned up two minutes past checkin time and joined th4e queue of about 50 people who were all being refused entry on to the flight, even though the flight was running an hour late, there was a near riot! Eventually they let us all on, but I was almost ready to book a one way car hire to get home, as I NEEDED to be at work the next day, that would've worked out to be an expensive day out!! Soemtimes these things happen.

dj_ad1200 wrote: »

3. Swap at Birmingham. NO-ONE to ask what platform we should go to at all so just followed the crowd

Sorry but this one sentence shows that you obviously don't know how to use trains and therefore shouldn't be allowed to use them. Why should there be someone there waiting to tell you personally where you need to go? They provide information screens in obvious places.

3. Swap at Birmingham. NO-ONE to ask what platform we should go to at all so just followed the crowd.

For future reference You can check online and find the platform info there. If you have a mobile with internet access put National rail or in this case London Midland on bookmarks then you can find the info as needed.

My last and final point is that a day trip to London from Liverpool is not a good idea with London Midland as the train Journey takes 5hours without any delays (which there was). So we set off from liverpool at 7am and arrived back at 10pm and we spent 5hours in London.

5 hours is still a long travel time. Did you know the estimared time of arrival.

At the moment, they have run out of drivers which is just plain silly, but a lot of their problems stem from having to share the tracks with Virgin who get priority on the platforms at London Euston for some reason, and the stupid time tables that are set by the government.

Exactly.

Wail wrote: »

Train Dispatcher could easily be found to undertake this role or information staff provided by Network Rail.

Distracting someone who is distpatching a train could be very dangerous and should not be attempted.

Why should NR provide someone on each platform? There is an information point and also information screens giving suitable information for even the most virginous of passengers to easily understand.