National Express East Coast are rapidly their increasing prices (National Express East Coast)

Member Name: GetinGrumpier

Product:	National Express East Coast
Date:	20/06/09 (55 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Frequent timetable

Disadvantages: Big fare increases over the past year

I use NXEC every week - no choice, I work in London, but live in the North East (my choice).
Unlike MPs I can't claim the cost of travel back, so I have to grab the tickets as soon as they're released - and if you were quick (very, very quick), you could grab cheap tickets.... until about 4 weeks ago. National Express have *almost tripled* the cost of tickets since May - it's not a mistake, believe you me, we watch these prices closely in order to keep costs down. We first thought it was profiteering for the school Summer holidays, but nope, NXEC have kept their prices up in September as well.
They're also squeezing passengers in other ways - book your ticket to travel from Newcastle say, and board at Durham, 12 minutes closer to London, and they'll deem the ticket invalid. And make you pay again.
So we *do* need alternative operators.

Summary: Do we need a private company to run our East Coast Mainline service?