Penalty Fare Appeal Support

We recently reported that London Midland was issuing Penalty Fares against the Penalty Fare rules, thus making them illegal.

We have since had a response from the Department for Transport, who have basiclly said they are not going to do anything about it.

The E-mail from the DfT has been copied below. It is worth noting that London Midland still has not responded.

Thank you sending to the Department a copy of your e-mail of 16 February about certain of their penalty fare warning notices which were incorrect. I have been asked to reply.

I immediately contacted London Midland, who confirmed that they had received your e‑mail and were taking action. They believed that the only stations affected were on the Walsall Line, i.e. Five Ways, Chester Road and Coventry, where they had affixed stickers to old Central Trains notices penalty fare warning notices to bring them up to date. This method had been working well but London Midland told me that of late persons unknown seemed to be targeting the posters by removing the stickers.

London Midland advised me that they had already identified the need to replace these notices but, as a result of your e-mail, now plan to expedite their replacement. In the meantime, they have advised their Station Managers to monitor the notices for any further interference.

With regard to any passengers who may have travelled from any of the stations affected and incurred a penalty fare, London Midland would be pleased to take any comments about the warning notices into account.

As London Midland has taken steps to ensure that any vandalism of the notices is dealt with swiftly, we do not at this moment consider it necessary to suspend their penalty fares scheme.

Thank you again for bringing this to our attention.

Arriva Cross Country trains are still living in the dark ages when it comes to method of payments.

Arriva, yes that Arriva, which is infamous for it’s poor customer service has decided that such rare cards as VISA, Mastercard and Amex cannot be used on board their trains.
God help you if you even attempt to try and buy somthing using these unknown and rare cards, and what’s this piece of paper? A Cheque? Sorry never heard of it.

Arriva also refuse to accept their own customer compensation vouchers. These vouchers are issued by CrossCountry for their own delays and bad customer services.

Out of all of the train companies in the UK that serve food on trains Arriva CrossCountry is the only one which refuses anything but cash.

We have asked CrossCountry for comment but as is standard with their customer services, they have failed to respond.

Update: We now note that both East Coast and Grand Central have put apologies and statements on their respective websites. However FCC in their normal style ignore there even was a problem. You can also see by their statement they have not got the faintest idea what happened Sunday night, instead asking us to ask East Coast what was going on.

We have today sent E-mails to our known contacts in East Coast and First Capital Connect, and also sent an Email to Grand Central asking what happened last night which caused so many passengers to arrive into London Kings Cross over 4 hours late. You can read the original blog entry here.

Grand Central was the first to respond and has the following to say

Grand Central Railway apologises to those of its passengers caught up in the disruption in the Hitchin area last night (Sunday).

Owing to a Network Rail signalling problem that caused an East Coast service to become marooned in the non-electrified section of the route near Hitchin (where engineering work was taking place) there was severe disruption to all rail services to London King’s Cross yesterday evening.

The East Coast train had to be assisted out of the affected area by Grand Central’s train.  Once this was done, we believed our train would proceed straightaway to Kings Cross. However, once pushed clear of the non electrified area, a technical problem occurred with the stalled train, which consequently blocked our onward journey until a rescue locomotive was summoned to take the affected train forward to London Kings Cross.

This resulted in several services to Kings Cross being delayed for up to four hours, included the Grand Central service from Sunderland.

Taxis were provided for passengers at Kings Cross for onward travel.

Network Rail is mounting an enquiry into the original signal problem and East Coast is mounting an enquiry into the cause of their trains subsequent failure which blocked the line to London.

Grand Central is supporting both these enquiries and will of course be looking at how we can learn from how the events were dealt with from a passenger’s viewpoint.

Meanwhile Grand Central customers involved in this delay are invited to send their tickets to our Customer Services department for compensation of the fare for that leg of the journey.

Once again Grand Central apologises for any inconvenience caused to our passengers, which were exacerbated by the fact that the Grand Central train, in common with the other trains affected were very busy, because train paths were severely limited by the planned engineering work in the Hitchin area.

East Coast has responded as follows:

East Coast apologises to customers whose journeys were delayed on the night of Sunday, 28 February.

In particular, East Coast wishes to apologise to passengers travelling on the 17.50 hrs service from Leeds to London King’s Cross. This train came to a standstill due to a signalling problem near where engineering work was taking place. The journey was further interrupted by a train failure before a rescue locomotive was arranged to allow customers to continue their journeys to King’s Cross, where taxis were provided for onward travel.

The 13.50 hrs service from Aberdeen to London King’s Cross was also seriously delayed as a result.

Under our Delay Repay compensation policy, which is one of the most generous in the rail industry, East Coast will refund the full cost of the rail tickets of passengers who travelled on these two seriously delayed East Coast trains.

Details of how to claim are available online at: http://www.eastcoast.co.uk/about-us/passengers-charter1/Delay-Repay/ or from East Coast stations.

East Coast apologises for the inconvenience caused. An investigation is underway to identify the cause of the technical problem on the 17.50 Leeds to Kings Cross service.

First Capital Connect have responded as follows:

Hello there, I understand the 1750 Leeds to Kings Cross came to a stand en-route to London but you’ll have to confirm that with East Coast. First Capital Connect will be offering double compensation.

UPDATE 09:30: We have been sent documents that now confirm there were points problems as well last night, caused by a Network Rail trackperson. This obviously caused even more delays to an already bad situation.

UPDATE 02:20: Customers are advised to claim the FULL COST of their tickets and taxi costs to the relevant train company. A full list of delayed trains is available here.

UPDATE 02:00: We have been sent a photo which we have added to this article, it shows platform 1 at London Kings Cross in the early hours of Monday morning 1st March.

We are currently receiving reports via twitter and industry internal systems that 3 trains this evening have arrived into London Kings Cross over 4 hours late.

According to twitter and industry sources, a broken down East Coast train north of Stevenage was causing all the delays. Reports are still coming in, however it is suggested that the train had brake problems. The brakes would not release.
Grand Central were given permission to try and shunt the East Coast train out of the way, but this failed and a rescue locomotive was summoned from somewhere further North.

Twitter reports state that the information on First Capital Connect was non-existent,  with one saying “and now the driver has got off and wandered off without explanation.”

Another Twitter user has stated “I thought central trains were bad and First Great Western shocking, but FCC have taken the f***ing grand slam of s***ness today.”

A passenger on East Coast tweeted stating “East Coast Trains are pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic. …”

However reports from Twitter users on Grand Central were much more positive.

[On a Grand Central Train] “Comedy can anyone who wants a taxi at Kings Cross come to the buffet car, 90% of a crowded train rush up, before crew realise that was a bad idea..”.
“I’m staying in the Premier Inn Kings Cross and the service from all the staff has been exceptional! Some 5 star hotels should take note.”
“Train isn’t going anywhere, we’ve been told they are getting taxi’s for everyone from Luton back to Kings Cross!!”

Internal E-mail messages as sent to us.

FROM       : First Capital Connect KX -
STATUS     : UPDATED
MESSAGE NO : 2099590468:15
TIME       : 00:25 on 01/03/10
—————————————————————————-
Train Information

Delay on the 1P78 20:00 Peterborough to London Kings Cross due 21:25 run on 28/02/10.

This train has now departed from Biggleswade and is now 220 minutes late.
This is due to an earlier broken down train.
The amended calling pattern follows:

Due Exp Delay Station
20:00 20:00     Peterborough
20:19 20:19     Huntingdon
20:26 20:26     St Neots
20:34 20:34     Sandy
20:37 00:17 03:40 Biggleswade
20:42 00:22 03:40 Arlesey
20:58 00:38 03:40 Stevenage
21:16 00:56 03:40 Finsbury Park
21:25 01:05 03:40 London Kings Cross

FROM       : East Coast
STATUS     : NEW
MESSAGE NO : 1267366789:1
TIME       : 00:05 on 01/03/10
—————————————————————————-
Line Problem

Train services between Peterborough and London Kings Cross are being disrupted due to a broken down train.
Delays of up to 200 minutes can be expected.

Further Information:
East Coast apologise for the delay to your journey.

Internal Information:
Message timed at: 0005 1A41 on the move. Taxi Co-Ordinator set up in Kings X to deal with affected passengers.
—————————————————————————-
*Please do not reply to this message*

This message is sent from East Coast Control ([TELEPHONE NUMBER DELETED]). For more train running information please check out the Live Train Running Information Boards which can be found on the Internal PDA and Intranet sites.

We recently reported that London Midland was issuing Penalty Fares against the Penalty Fare rules, thus making them illegal.

We then contacted London Midland and recived the following E-mail from an Ian Taylor:

Date: 17/02/2010 14:32
Name: Ian Taylor
Email: ian.taylor@londonmidland.com
Comments: I am in receipt of an email from you via our customer relations office. Are you able to send me copies of the signage in question including all related information ie person who has appealled, date, penalty fare number, etc. Many thanks

We replied to him, with all the details and evidence we have gotten from our various sources and as of today are yet to recive any response from him.

PFAS takes this to be London Midland hiding and hoping it will all go away. Now that sounds more like First Capital Connects policy.

Beleaguered Train operator First Capital Connect experienced the wrath of passengers this morning.

Due to yet another broken down FCC train in Central London (presumably caused by poor maintenance thanks to cost cutting) someone in FCC West Hampstead Control thought it would be clever to cancel a train which was already full and standing to keep a timetable.

The train, which is reported to be the 07:32 departure from St Albans, arrived at Cricklewood at 0752. The driver then told the passengers to get off the train as it was being cancelled due to a broken down train.

Around 20 passengers then refused to get off the train and stood their ground.

It has also been reported to us at PFAS that staff and the driver shouted at the passengers to get off the train, and threatened them with getting the police. The driver then announced over the PA system that the police had now been called.

Several other people then got back on the train to support the other passengers.

The train eventually left 34 minutes late after FCC finally used their brains and realised they weren’t getting anywhere, and reinstated the train.

FCC’s Roger Perkins released a spin statement stating the following:

“The train came to a halt in Cricklewood and the driver would have made an announcement that it was going to terminate there. Twenty passengers would not get off the train and eventually, because of that, the train did then run. The effect of that is that it caused more delays to other people on other services up and down the line.
When we do this it’s not a decision we take lightly, it is for very good reason. It’s about regulating the service and getting as many people into London as quickly as possible when we have a serious delay such as this.”

Roger claims that “its not a decision they take lightly”, however PFAS can report that cancelling trains short of destinations and then making them into return journeys is so that FCC can massage their performance figures. Yeah it maybe a decision they don’t take lightly but not in the benefit of passengers.

People are reminded to claim their compensation from FCC at http://www.firstcapitalconnect.co.uk/DelayRepay.

Furthermore please sign the petition to get this company stripped of its franchise. http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/FirstCC/

Penalty Fare Appeal Support has introduced a new portion of our blog site.

We have decided to start up a new caption contest.

Ever so often we will post a new picture and invite your comments, the best ones as determined by PFAS (and our friends down the local ale house) will be published on the site.
The best comment of all will win a £10 E-voucher for Amazon.co.uk. (which is why we need your E-mail address, don’t worry we wont spam you).

The full rules and the latest picture can be found at our new caption contest page.

The RMT and TSSA unions have confirmed a joint ballot of Network Rail maintenance staff will commence on 25th February 2010. The ballot will end on or around March 12th 2010.

A yes vote in a series of strike and action short of strike ballots would see action begin from Sunday March 21 in the run up to the Easter getaway.

The ballot for action is over the threat of redundancies as part of a national drive to axe up to 1500 safety-critical maintenance jobs, a failure to follow existing redeployment procedures, a threat to use external contractors to carry out existing in-house maintenance work and a failure to communicate planned changes as part of the on-going Network Rail maintenance re-organisation.

Gerry Doherty, TSSA general secretary, said:
I hope that we can avoid any disruption over the Easter break and I am calling on Network Rail to start serious discussions with us now to prevent that happening.

Not only are they insisting on going ahead with these job cuts but they are refusing to give us a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies when they keep claiming the jobs will go on a voluntary basis.

He accused NR of “macho management” in the run up to the General Election in a bid to impress the new Government, be it Labour or Tory.

He also warned another 1500 members in Network Rail would be balloted on strike action if NR did not improve on an 0.8% pay offer by next Tuesday.

This offer comes at a time when inflation has risen to 3.7% so they are in effect asking our members to take a 2 per cent pay cut for next year.

Iain Coucher is always very generous in awarding himself bumper bonuses every year – even last year when he gave up one third of his bonus in a PR stunt he still managed to walk away with over £350,000 on top of his £600,000 salary.

We would like him to be more generous to the staff this year and less generous to himself and his richly rewarded fellow directors.”

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:
“We are balloting for a national strike because we know that the threat to axe jobs and compromise safety standards makes another Hatfield, Potters Bar or Grayrigg disaster on the UK rail network inevitable.

We have warned Network Rail repeatedly that if they don’t lift the threat to jobs and rail safety that we will have no choice but to take action. They have ignored those warnings and so the ballot will begin next week.

I have no doubt that the British people will understand that you cannot take reckless gambles with rail safety in the name of ‘efficiency’ and to hit financial targets on the bottom of a balance sheet.

“We are calling for an overwhelming yes vote in this ballot but remain committed to talks with Network Rail aimed at reaching a settlement to this dispute that puts the safety and security of passengers and staff right back to the top of the agenda.”

In what has been described as a major blow to it’s rivals, FirstGroup plc has been given a £20m contract to run the transport operations for the 2012 London Olympic games.

The new company name is rumored to be called First Olympic Buses or First Olympic. But don’t start buying up the domain names, the Government has introduced law forbidden use of any Olympic terms without permission.

FirstGroup have had their share of major cockups in the past, what with being issued a yellow card and remedial notices on First Great Western and a “final warning” on First Capital Connect.

Can First deliver the goods? Only time will tell. PFAS belives that First do have the experince in running bus operations, but when they cockup, they do so majorly.