modernrail
Member
- Joined
- 26 Jul 2015
- Messages
- 1,060
I cannot believe a single other European country could be throwing such an utterly confusing situation at customers for such a sustained period. The mix of cancellations and nonsense information on fares etc is making the railway look like an unprofessional joke, at best.To be fair Avanti/LNER/TPE are trying to manage expectations by not selling tickets nominally "for" trains that don't or may not exist. But the approach is cack-handed in the extreme, because it was bodged in rather than properly designed.
Whilst this nonsense is ongoing they should reduce advance tickets to cover no more than 20% of the train, maybe less. Sell the remainder of all trains including peaks at the off peak fare, declassify first to standard premium and sell standard premium at 20% above standard. That will stop the booking engines throwing nonsense fares out that basically are not honoured anyway when you get on the train. It will also max out limited capacity.
If they are having to cancel 16 trains on a day when they have a massively reduced timetable anyway, that is surely something more than staff refusing to work rest days etc. Surely their actually fully rostered staff can run that level of service? Otherwise what on earth is going on.