This is going to sound kinda pathetic, but I had to go to Brookwood from Basingstoke. I asked the ticket man, the man on the platform and the man on the train. They all said that this train was goung to stop everywhere including Brookwood. Being a bit of a sceptic, I also looked up at the TV screen and it said the train was going to stop at Brookwood.
So, I got on the train. The train stopped everywhere, Hook, Wichfield, Fleet and Farnborough. Then I gathered my bags awaiting our braking-run into Brookwood. Gosh! What a surprise, Brookwood at 70 mph is a blur, but it didn't help me. Obviously, I did not get off the train.
When I got to Woking, the SWT customer services personnel were brilliant, apart from treating me like a victim of Alzheimer's Disease. They told me that my ticket was OK, but I should have asked somebody whether the train stopped at Brookwood. They also suggested, brilliantly as it happens, that I should romp across to platform 4, where the next stoping train to Brookwood was going to arrive.
At this point I was frantic, because it was the first day of a new job at a place of incarceration. As it turned out, platform 4 was the right place to be, and the "stopper" from Waterloo was on time, and got me to Brookwood, and the prison, on time.
To sum it up, if only someone at Basingstoke had told me that the 7.50 didn't stop at Brookwood, and if the people on the platform knew where the hell the train stopped, it would have saved me an awful lot of grief.
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Good op...you should be rating more people so they will come
back and rate you..LL
BNibbles 01.03.2001 22:50
I agree with your assessment of SWT for different reasons. Where I live on the "Hounslow Loop" there are no staff - still at least they couldn't misinform me! To be fair, the roving conductors are generally very nice, and since the trains from Isleworth are "all stations" affairs, there is nothing to get wrong.
The whole effort has an air of "let's milk the existing stock for all it's worth and then leg it". I read with some interest the GNER are bidding for the next franchise, with some bold plans for a tunnel from Waterloo to Kings X and double-deck trains to increase capacity on some routes (betcha life this doesn't include the Hounslow Cinderella line though). Perhaps the threat of losing the job will put a squib up SWT's arse! They should know from Connex South Central's example that it's possible to get the sack.
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Mar 1st, 2001
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