Frustrating (West Anglia & Great Northern (WAGN))

Member Name: JonRose

Product:	West Anglia & Great Northern (WAGN)
Date:	19/04/01 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: they go to London

Disadvantages: lots

I am not sure how much of this is just a problem with WAGN but I am aware that many other operators suffer from similar and worse problems. As a commuter over the last five years or so, I have had to endure my fair share of troubles on this line.

Broken rails, well the impact form the Hatfield crash is still going on adding delays to journeys over six months after the accident. There was an occasion some six months before the crash when I was delayed three hours because there was a broken rail, there apparently was a one foot gap in the track right in front of the train. The problems were there before and the train companies were also aware of problems long before a fatal accident.

Information, if there is one thing that annoys me more than bad service, is when you are experiencing bad service and you cannot find out how anything about it and how long it is going to affect you for. WAGN are terrible about letting you know how long things are going to take.

Poor excuses, I just wish they would stop moaning and blaming other parties - governments, vandals, railtrack, their customers. I would rather hear an honest answer and an honest timeframe. They seem to be too busy working to a 20 year plan that they are too busy to tell us what is really going on and what we are going to see on a frequent basis that makes out lives better.

Customer service, They are terrible at responding to the complaints and also responding in a suitable time frame. This is an unacceptable, when circumstances get serious enough for people to want to complain then complaints are ony official if they are received in writing (phone complaints do not count!), plus they take well over a month to process the complaints. They would not let me travel for a month free on the trains without paying!

I have lost all tolerance with them and now automatically fire off a complaint and a request for compensation whenever it is appropriate. I may not be a sa
tisfied customer but at least I can be a customer who is getting a proportion of his train far back.

The list of complaints can go on and on, overcrowding, dirty trains, slow trains, infrequent trains, no trains during the night (so much for 24 hour society). Unmanned ticket offices, mercenary ticket inspectors desperate for their cut of a penalty fare. Several of these complaints should be aimed at Railtrack, but WAGN should not stand idly by and let them take the mickey with our services.

Summary: