It's not Rocket Science - disgruntled

It's not Rocket Science

It's not even as complicated as bicycle engineering. I'm sorry to bang on about this, but when they had the bright idea of privatising our public transport by breaking it up into its constituent parts and having them compete against each other (As in: 'ooh, I was going to go to Edinburgh because that is where my important business meeting is but these trains here are much shinier and cheaper so I'll go to Manchester instead', er yes that's really going to happen...) they promised that we would still have an integrated transport system.

Integrated transport system my arse.

This morning we managed to get the ticket office at Hackney Downs to sell us some tickets to Chalfont & Latimer, after much prodding of the computer (but without resorting to the Big Book). I think only about five people missed their trains in the queue behind us while we spelled out the station name twice (you're never going to somewhere short like 'Bow' on these occasions, are you?) and shelled out the best part of 8 quid. Then when we got to Baker Street we found that there were no trains running in that direction at all and even the man on the platform didn't sound that enthusiastic about the 'rail replacement bus service' that was supposed to be running from somewhere near Wembley. He suggested getting a refund, but the ticket office at Baker Street couldn't do it because we'd bought the tickets at a 'national rail station' - which somewhat exaggerates Hackney Downs's place in the scheme of things - and said we could try any mainline station. Anyway we cancelled our lunch and instead had a pleasant afternoon in Regent's park and decided to try and chisel a refund out of Liverpool street on the way back.

Once at Liverpool Street, and finally at a ticket window, the man there claimed that there were trains running to Chalfont and Latimer on the underground. No there weren't, we said. Not at Baker street there weren't. Well there's nothing on the system about it, he said. Ah yes, the system. Be that as it may, we responded, there were still no actual physical trains running from Baker street, however many virtual ones there might be on the system. Bear in mind here that the Metropolitan line actually runs through Liverpool Street, yet there was no mention anywhere that it wasn't running beyond Wembley Park.

After he'd looked at us suspiciously to work out what inventive scam we were running that involved buying tickets costing a few quid and then gratuitously claiming a refund after waiting in a queue for twenty minutes, he agreed to write 'not used' on the tickets and stamp them with his big official stamp, but he wouldn't give us our actual money back, despite the fact that the trains running out of Liverpool street and the stations they serve are now all of part of the entertainingly named (and supposedly integrated) 'one' network, with presumably an integrated financial system to match. To get a refund, we would have to go to Hackney Downs.

Where the ticket office was shut.

19.6.05 17:46

Permalink

To date 2 Comment(s) TrackBack-URL

(21.6.05 20:32)
Has anyone compared your blog to Kafka yet?

(21.6.05 21:04)
No, are you going to?