ddavids
New Member
I was stuck at Yeovil one Saturday night last year and we rang The help button and found it very hard to get them to understand enlish
-
Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Are National Rail Enquiries based at Ryde Pier Head?
- Thread starter 306024
- Start date
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
PudseyBearHST
Member
I called not too long ago and I have no idea where they are based but it was a lady with an Indian accent. Not wanting to assume but do national rail have call centres in other countries too then or is it just the one in Isle of Wight?
Edit: upon reading other posts, I see they do.
Edit: upon reading other posts, I see they do.
TT-ONR-NRN
Established Member
Yes, I really do think it would be better placed in the UK, primarily because it's often quite difficult to be understood. And that's coming from someone who today speaks with an entirely Southern English accent and dialect, in case anyone was wondering if that was down to the Canadian roots. If I have to repeat myself five times, I don't know how someone with a glorious thick Scouse or Geordie accent (love them) would get through.
I have the same experience calling Vodafone to be honest.
DelW
Established Member
- Joined
- 15 Jan 2015
- Messages
- 3,880
I'm not sure if you were joking, but there is no office at Pier Head, for NRE or anything else. There's a waiting room for the ferry and a cafe, and that's about it. Tickets etc. are sold at the travel office at Esplanade, which is at the other end of the pier.
Not only that but in recent years one on the Overground was giving the number is 0845... where as I thought it was now 0345....
Gaelan
Member
Ticketing sites - maybe, last we heard no.
Enquiry sites - no, unless there's a drastic reversal in policy. Currently, all train running data is public and anyone (myself included!) can operate such a site without any sort of commercial relationship, and I don't see why that would need to change with any reforms.
NorthernSpirit
Established Member
- Joined
- 21 Jun 2013
- Messages
- 2,184
The last time I used one in the North...
Northern:
• Information: toss up between NRE in Mumbai or control in York (usually dependant on the time of day).
• Emergency: never pressed it in case it went through to the police.
Either way its quite worrying that that there is no consistancy.
Does it have to be Whatsapp or would it work through standard SMS?
Both numbers will connect, but the 0845 is rather considerably more expensive.
Indeed and I thought 0845 numbers weren't supposed to be used now in caes such as this.
AlbertBeale
Established Member
Yes indeed - if I wanted travel info I'd always phone the number for the nearest main station on the relevant route - and generally got through to someone who knew what they were talking about and was keen to be helpful...
Nothing prevents providers (outside financial services where stricter rules apply) from operating whatever numbers they like for customer contact, as long as at least one of them is a "normal rate" number, generally interpreted as 01, 02, 03 or 080. The law says customers making post-sale enquiries must not be "bound to pay more than the normal rate".
It'll be WhatsApp only (certainly initially) with demand for old fashioned SMS being very much on the decline these days. Definitely something we could look at if there was a real demand for it, but offering either speaking with someone through the Help Point or via WhatsApp, seems a reasonable offering?
323235
Established Member
I remember using the help point at Dronfield when attending a RailUK meal in circa 2013 to find out when the next train to Denton was. It connected to India and they thought their computer was broken as there were no trains coming up.
Thats right,used to be in Cardiff
SMS is certainly old-fashioned, but every single phone from every manufacturer still has access to it, and it works without a data connection. Not everyone has Whatsapp installed (or even wants to, speaking personally), and there's plenty of stations out there with little-to-no 4G coverage.
I certainly appreciate that SMS usage is only going down and developing for multiple platforms adds complexity and cost. Please don't take this as an attack as I think adding a text chat service is a brilliant idea, but I strongly feel that private apps or services shouldn't take the place of more widely accessible options, particularly for things like accessing helplines.
(Another personal bugbear is What3Words, an app with a lot of flashy marketing and venture capital funding behind it but which adds no utility over simple GPS co-ordinates - which every phone sold in the last 15 years can access, and again without a mobile data connection. And when it goes wrong, it can have very serious consequences.)
How would they deal with this…
Hello, could you tell me the time of the next train from
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch to Llanfairfechan please
Surely no worse than how the National Rail Enquiries app on my Android phone deals with the first station..... it doesn't! No station found.How would they deal with this…
Hello, could you tell me the time of the next train from
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch to Llanfairfechan please
I am assuming you spelt it correctly.
LickeyIncliner
Member
You were spoilt if you "generally got through". We had a choice of two main stations to call, neither of which was likely to answer - and if someone did answer, they were at best unenthusiastic and often downright unhelpful.
The situation did have the good result that at a relatively early age I learnt how to plan journeys using the published timetable books that were available in the local public library. Separate books by region when I started doing that!
AlbertBeale
Established Member
Being London based meant being able to choose to ring a number at the relevant London terminal - the various phone numbers were in the phone book. I accept that I was in a better situation than many.
That's a fair point - obviously there are costs associated with SMS as well from a business point of view. But it's definitely something we'd look at if the demand was there.
TheTallOne
Member
WhatsApp etc sounds useful, but not 100% sure about use of barcode
There’s been a few instances of scammers putting their own barcode on top of real ones at car parks - to scam people out of money.
Obviously in this case it’s less likely to be money related, but could still be an issue.