Dear sir or madam:
After yet another frustrating experience with your web pages I felt it time to write to thetrainline.com.
Your site contains several maddening idiosyncrasies that render the actual purchasing of a ticket a gamble at best. A few examples:
Pressing the Back button at the bottom of the page returns you, not to the previously visited page as one might assume but to another seemingly random page. The Back button has taken me to the Home page, a favourite journey page and a journey selection page- all no doubt helpful pages, just not the ones I had visited prior.
Today as I attempted to go back and change the ticket delivery method I was sent to the Home page. Naturally my ticket selections up to that point were not saved in the utterly useless Basket so I had to begin again. After diligently re-entering my travel information I was presented a list of fares totally different from those given to me just a few minutes before. Was I surprised that the low-cost tickets that I had attempted to book were no longer listed? Not in the least.
The ability of the site to thwart the actual buying of train tickets is seemingly limitless. I have selected tickets and fares only to be told that those seats were, in reality, unavailable. No matter that they were listed as available and, after logging out, clearing my cache and logging back in, still showed as available. Strangely enough, selecting higher priced tickets for the same journey allowed me to proceed unmolested.
On the rare occasions that I have been able to select the time and fare that I desired, I have been told that my credit card was unable to be processed for reasons ranging from “the system is down” to my personal favourite, “you have selected an invalid journey.” If the only available journeys are ones the site itself lists and we have no choice but to select those, how is that even possible?
In desperation I have even attempted to call your Customer Services Department or, as we call it around the office, “The No-Help Desk.” Setting aside the fact that your Asian operators are forced to use ridiculous Anglo names and have impenetrable accents, their lack of empowerment to do anything at all helpful is outshined only by their lack of courtesy and understanding.
My experiences are far from unique or isolated. Indeed an admittedly unscientific survey I took of my colleagues found that each and every one of them had similar frustrations with thetrainline.com.
Since you pretty much have a monopoly on Internet bookings, we the travelling public are more often than not forced to endure the small slice of hell that is the Trainline website. Your mandate is to sell tickets and I’m sure you do, however I would imagine that you would sell more tickets and receive less letters like this if you could improve your site and in-source your customer service.
Best regards,
After yet another frustrating experience with your web pages I felt it time to write to thetrainline.com.
Your site contains several maddening idiosyncrasies that render the actual purchasing of a ticket a gamble at best. A few examples:
Pressing the Back button at the bottom of the page returns you, not to the previously visited page as one might assume but to another seemingly random page. The Back button has taken me to the Home page, a favourite journey page and a journey selection page- all no doubt helpful pages, just not the ones I had visited prior.
Today as I attempted to go back and change the ticket delivery method I was sent to the Home page. Naturally my ticket selections up to that point were not saved in the utterly useless Basket so I had to begin again. After diligently re-entering my travel information I was presented a list of fares totally different from those given to me just a few minutes before. Was I surprised that the low-cost tickets that I had attempted to book were no longer listed? Not in the least.
The ability of the site to thwart the actual buying of train tickets is seemingly limitless. I have selected tickets and fares only to be told that those seats were, in reality, unavailable. No matter that they were listed as available and, after logging out, clearing my cache and logging back in, still showed as available. Strangely enough, selecting higher priced tickets for the same journey allowed me to proceed unmolested.
On the rare occasions that I have been able to select the time and fare that I desired, I have been told that my credit card was unable to be processed for reasons ranging from “the system is down” to my personal favourite, “you have selected an invalid journey.” If the only available journeys are ones the site itself lists and we have no choice but to select those, how is that even possible?
In desperation I have even attempted to call your Customer Services Department or, as we call it around the office, “The No-Help Desk.” Setting aside the fact that your Asian operators are forced to use ridiculous Anglo names and have impenetrable accents, their lack of empowerment to do anything at all helpful is outshined only by their lack of courtesy and understanding.
My experiences are far from unique or isolated. Indeed an admittedly unscientific survey I took of my colleagues found that each and every one of them had similar frustrations with thetrainline.com.
Since you pretty much have a monopoly on Internet bookings, we the travelling public are more often than not forced to endure the small slice of hell that is the Trainline website. Your mandate is to sell tickets and I’m sure you do, however I would imagine that you would sell more tickets and receive less letters like this if you could improve your site and in-source your customer service.
Best regards,
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