During the early part of the morning I received a call from my firm's mobile phone supplier. It was in response to a reminder I had sent to them on Wednesday on the fact that since I hadn't heard from them since I had received an email a month ago to say that they couldn't fix the problem with emails not being redirected to my BlackBerry.
During the phone call the Director of the Company that had phoned was consistently denying that it was their responsibility, blaming other people for giving him incorrect information and consistently trying to wriggle out of trying to sort the problem out.
Later in the day I was on the 16:49 train from Birmingham New Street to Hereford. I tweeted that people were standing (in some cases all of the way to Worcester Shrub Hill) and that the operator, London Midland should add more coaches as it was in my opinion unacceptable. London Midland responded by saying that they had increased that particular service to 4 coaches and sorry if I found that uncomfortable. No response to a suggestion that they should increase to 5 coaches.
As the customer I find both the attitude of the mobile phone salesman and the train operator poor and wrong. In the case of the former I will be looking for a new supplier and will contact the service provider to complain.
For the train operators the position is that although I find the train a useful method of transport into major cities the reputation of this particular operator is already very low following a string of cancellations a few months ago. Attitude like theirs will not recover this but do they care. They have the licence to operate the trains for a number of years and are more interested in profit than giving a good customer experience.
For me? I will ensure that I am never on the 16:49 train in the future!
