Off the rails

My teenage son again. He travels to school by train and was caught (twice) by Revenue Protection Officers without his season ticket. On the first occasion he'd left it somewhere in his teenage boy life. On the second, which happened to be the last day of term (brilliant strategic planning by the swat team don't you think) he was without it because it was stolen the night before, along with his phone and wallet. As a penalty for this I have just paid the two fines totalling £43 despite having a valid season ticket, which was paid for in advance, covering the days he failed to present it.

Is it just me or this staggering contempt for the customer? What other business would treat a loyal and fully subscribed customer in this way? Will penalising my son (or me) make him less forgetful or less of a target for thugs? Can First Capital Connect not discern the difference between a fare dodger and a season ticket holder?

The customer experience of the average rail user is pretty miserable at the best of times. This is because the customer experience is so low down the list of priorities of the people in charge of the business. Train companies are, without exception, among the most impervious to modern business methods and incapable of adapting to the times. They are opaque, difficult to contact, hard to understand, over priced, deliver a poor quality product and deliberately keep a distance from customers.

At the station where my son leaves the train to go to school they have just installed automatic ticket barriers. This helps First Capital Connect by capturing useful data on passengers and reduces fare dodging. But how does it improve the customer experience? By creating a 100 metre queue of passengers trying to get through the newly installed machines. Brilliant!