The Cotswold Line Trains

Tue 2 Oct 2007, 12:57

Dear J. Norris: I stand by my previous comment. It may have been facetious but then travelling with FGW tends to foment a great deal of facetiousness in me!

OK, you were able to give your comments to the FGW managers on Friday morning but how many others did likewise? Certainly no-one else has posted to that effect on this forum. I do speak from personal experience because for many years I used to commute to/from Oxford by train and would have passed through Oxford station between the times when the managers were available for consultation. There is no way on earth I would have stopped to speak to them had the opportunity existed in those days, for two reasons: (i) because my incoming train was invariably delayed and I had to scuttle off to my office so as not to arrive late; and (ii) because I would have physiologically incapable of conherent speech at such an ungodly hour in the morning! The afternoon would have been a different matter: I could have left work 5 or 10 minutes earlier than normal and thus created time to speak to the train personnel before my train departed. Had that train been late (and it often was in those days) I would have had even more time to stop and chat (and something relevant and topical to complain about!).

It seems to me as if last week's exercise was yet another example of FGW paying lip-service to the concept of customer care. They hold a "surgery" for a couple of hours in the morning rush hour. Very few people stop to give their views because they are too busy rushing off to their offices, appointments, etc. FGW say "Well, we held a consultation exercise but nobody much could be bothered to come and talk to us." If FGW are really serious about listening to their customers why not have a desk open on Oxford station all day long? Why are the views of passengers like me who mostly use the trains at off-peak times deemed to be less valid than those of commuters? Can one of our resident FGW apologists please explain this to me?