Comments on: Virgin trains – a bit crap

By: Political Penguin

Political Penguin — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:42:04 +0000

Thankfully I haven’t needed to book a ticket since. I’ve opted for the decidedly more high tech method of getting the bus to the railway station and paying in cash.

Does the trick with repeatedly keep pressing ’9′ still work then?

By: Marianne

Marianne — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:40:42 +0000

Almost a year later and your post is still relevant -I came across it while looking for a solution to the very same problem.

Awful!

By: David Hartley

David Hartley — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:05:31 +0000

I agree it’s time to run the railways again as a national service, run by one company for the benefit of the people. The pricing of public transport in general in the UK is far more costly compared to our neighbours on the continent, and I think standards of personal service are much worse.

I used to wonder how many countries abroad offered a higher standard yet still made a healthy profit, until I read that in France for instance the privately owned train operator cannot legally make a profit until minimum standards for the passengers can be met in full. Also in Switzerland the trains are run by one company and buses the other.

A much better system surely!

By: Political Penguin

Political Penguin — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:55:30 +0000

Dave, I’m not particularly concerned with regards to the price. The issue in question is the quality of the service. A website that is poorly designed, falls over or simply doesn’t work and customer service staff who are at best highly annoying to deal with. As regards long term advance booking there isn’t any real cost savings as you’ll pick up the same deals at the counter in the train station in Wolverhampton as what’s available online. If you think it’s a good service Dave, you’ve obviously through experience become acustomed to poor quality. I personally don’t expect that, it’s not the kind of service I’d provide to my customers so I equally expect such high quality service from others.

By: David Hartley

David Hartley — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:23:34 +0000

I’m afraid the Virgin online booking service is designed with long term booking in mind. If you know exactly when you want to travel up to two or three months in advance it’s a fantastic little service and very good for people on modest budgets.

However, anything less than a week in advance, my experience is exactly what you’ve gone through Gareth, and it honestly is better to go the travel office at the station and get the tickets over the counter, although this is quite an expensive option sadly!

I made two train journeys last week, one to London and one to Liverpool. For London I booked two single journeys 8 weeks ago (the cheapest way to book very often) at