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Booking rail tickets
Our railway booking system system is a complete shambles.
Richard struggled with their web site for ages and finally managed to find a route from Poole to Glasgow via London that would cost Henry and myself £120 to go to Worldcon and back.
I phoned up to book the tickets and was told that they were cheap ones and were no longer available.
Not only that, but the woman in the Indian call centre assured me that there were no through trains from Bournemouth to Glasgow (as an alternative to going via London). I *know* that train exists. I've been on it when travelling up north.
I managed to find another person on the end of the phone by ringing a different number. After much discussion and by travelling a day earlier, we managed to find an option that would only cost £160 if we travelled a day earlier. I noted down the details and said I'd call back later as I needed to check Richard was okay with us going a day earlier.
When I phoned back again, I hit lucky. I got a guy who was really keen to help, struggled through different trains and different days of travel in an effort to find any route that still had cheap tickets on it. Henry and I will have to struggle across London from Waterloo to Euston, but now it's only costing us a total of £76 pounds. (I made sure to let him know how much I appreciated his hard work.)
Go figure why no one could find this route in the first place.
There is undoubtedly a fortune awaiting anyone who can write decent software for evaluating train journeys. The staff on the phone lines don't have decent software to work with. The web sites are not updated when the cheap tickets run out. The telephone enquiry lines are not updated either, and the long-suffering staff on ticket sales have to tell people that the ticket they believed they could get is no longer available.
Richard struggled with their web site for ages and finally managed to find a route from Poole to Glasgow via London that would cost Henry and myself £120 to go to Worldcon and back.
I phoned up to book the tickets and was told that they were cheap ones and were no longer available.
Not only that, but the woman in the Indian call centre assured me that there were no through trains from Bournemouth to Glasgow (as an alternative to going via London). I *know* that train exists. I've been on it when travelling up north.
I managed to find another person on the end of the phone by ringing a different number. After much discussion and by travelling a day earlier, we managed to find an option that would only cost £160 if we travelled a day earlier. I noted down the details and said I'd call back later as I needed to check Richard was okay with us going a day earlier.
When I phoned back again, I hit lucky. I got a guy who was really keen to help, struggled through different trains and different days of travel in an effort to find any route that still had cheap tickets on it. Henry and I will have to struggle across London from Waterloo to Euston, but now it's only costing us a total of £76 pounds. (I made sure to let him know how much I appreciated his hard work.)
Go figure why no one could find this route in the first place.
There is undoubtedly a fortune awaiting anyone who can write decent software for evaluating train journeys. The staff on the phone lines don't have decent software to work with. The web sites are not updated when the cheap tickets run out. The telephone enquiry lines are not updated either, and the long-suffering staff on ticket sales have to tell people that the ticket they believed they could get is no longer available.