Virgin on the Ridiculous

I travel to Manchester a fair bit. This necessitates the use of Virgin Trains. Definately not one of life's little pleasures.

Way back in May I travelled to Mancester for two consecutive weekends and I was delayed on the return journey by over an hour each weekend. I, of course, put in my claim for compensation from the rail company, which arrived today in the form of travel vouchers to a value of £4.00. I was going to call from work to find out where they got their figure from, but when I went to Waverley Station to ask the Virgin staff there for the number I was told that there wasn't a customer service call centre and there was no telephone number for customers to contact head office. When I arrived home and looked at the letter there is, naturally, a number to call.

To give credit where it is due the girl on the other end of the phone was polite, friendly and helpful. She took the information needed to find my complaint and said that she could see straight away that it had been assessed incorrectly. She noted that my name had been input into the system incorrectly and corrected it. She listened to my rant about the inadequacies of Virgin's West Coast service, and she apologised and said that despite their efforts to run the service on-time they were clearly failing. When I said that I was contemplating using a longer route to avoid using Virgin she sounded genuinely upset. At least I will wait and see what happens with the complaint from here on, before making drastic changes to my travel plans.