Waiting For Metrolink

You know the feeling, you're stood in the rain at Altrincham, Deansgate, Market Street, Bury or any other Matrolink stop. The display screen either doesn't work as that "improvement" to the network hasn't been completed yet or says "DELAY". 

That's how I feel right now. 

Three weeks ago I sent an e-mail to Metrolink to complain about how my pregnant wife had been treated by their staff; details of that are in my blog here.

This is the automated reply I received to my original e-mail, the italics are mine.

"Thank you for contacting the Metrolink Customer Experience team.

We appreciate you taking the time to share your comments with us.  Our Customer Experience team will respond to your comments as soon as possible, but please be aware that this can take up to 15 working days if further investigation is required.  If we are unable to provide you with a full response in this time, we will contact you to explain why.

If you wish to speak to us in relation to your comments or if your enquiry is urgent, please call a member of our Customer Experience team on 0161 205 2000; the team will be available between 06.00 and 23.00 Monday to Friday, 08.00 and 20.00 Saturday and Sunday.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact Metrolink; we value your feedback."

I have had a response from a member of the Customer Service Team, surprisingly first thing the following morning after my blog had been posted and shared the previous evening:

"Thank you for your email

Please pass on our sincere apologies to your wife for the problem she had whilst travelling on the Metrolink.

Whenever we receive a complaint regarding a member of staff we thoroughly investigate, for us to be able to investigate your email, could you please supply us with more information,

Where was your wife travelling to and from,

What station did she board,

What time was she travelling.

Thanks."

I've replied to all the details Metrolink asked for and have chased this up both directly by e-mail and via social media. On both occasions I'm told the matter is being fully investigated.

So Metrolink admit the matter required "further investigation" as per their automated reply and  I should therefore either have a full reply or an explanation as to why not in fifteen working days. That's today going off the date of my original e-mail or tomorrow based on the exchange of e-mails I had with their team. 

Either way Metrolink you owe me a detailed e-mail either with the results of your investigation and what you are doing about it or a full explanation of what you have been doing, "investigating" no longer washes and when I can expect a full response.  

So come on Metrolink, we are waiting....... 

Is This Any Way To Treat a Pregnant Lady?

Here the situation: a five month pregnant lady is on a tram, she can't get a seat so is holding on to the hand rails, she has been told by her doctor that she needs to keep hydrated and to drink liquids as much as she can, with this in mind she is sipping from a bottle of Diet Coke. 

Enter the Metrolink "Customer Service Representatives" who instead of checking tickets, which as far as I can tell is their primary role, they tell said pregnant lady that she can't drink on the tram and if she continues she can be fined . The pregnant lady explains that the doctor has told her to keep drinking, she is five months pregnant and gets dizzy if she doesn't, it's not helping not having a seat. Perhaps they could assist by asking one of the other passengers who are fully able to relinquish a "priority seat" so she can sit down? No they can't do that a "priority seat" is a polite request, they can't make the polite request? No. 

So they pregnant lady has to continue to stand for the remainder of her trip. 

This is what happened to my wife Janet this afternoon on her way to meet a friend. Once I found out I was quite frankly furious. This isn't some faceless corporation this was a face to face exchange with an employee who could see for herself what was going on. 

I decided to e-mail Metrolink customer services the following:

"Dear Metrolink

Perhaps you could clarify your position with regards to pregnant passengers. My wife, five months pregnant, was standing on one of your trams earlier today. She has not been well and has been told by a doctor she needs to drink lots of fluids. So why, may I ask is she told by your "customer service representatives" that she must stop or be fined for consuming a bottle of diet coke on the tram? Perhaps if your "customer service representatives" were a bit more useful and helped my wife get a "priority" seat as she asked them to do, so she wasn't feeling so dizzy and needing a drink?

I'm sure you'll tell me, as your "customer service representatives" told my wife that they have no power to enforce "priority" seats but are more than happy to deprive a regnant lady of much needed liquid. Seriously, is this the low level petty mindedness of your company and staff that you are more bothered about a potential spillage of diet coke than ensuring a "priority" passenger, by your own definition, gets a seat? Be thankful my wife didn't fall in one of your frequent sudden stops or rocket starts.

No doubt you will file this e-mail away in your deleted folder never to be replied to but it would be nice to think there is somebody at Metrolink that is the tiniest bit concerned about this whole incident as it is clear to me your staff have their "priorities" all wrong.

I look forward to your early reply and comments."

As yet all I've had is an automated reply saying I will get a response in 15 days. Didn't last time I sent them my comments but I'm not letting this one lie. We looked into the Metrolink bylaws and Conditions of Carriage found here. Clause 7 makes interesting reading:

"7. (1) NO person shall consume:

a) any alcoholic beverage on any Vehicle or any Station or;
b) any food which will soil disfigure or destroy the property of any other Person on the System or any Vehicle or any Station.

2) No person who is in a state of intoxication or under the influence of the effects of any illegal substance shall enter or attempt to enter any Vehicle or any Station and (without prejudice to Byelaw 7 (1) above) any Authorised Officer who reasonably believes any Person to be intoxicated or under the influence of the effects of any illegal substance shall be authorised and entitled to require such a Person to leave any such Vehicle forthwith (or when it is next safe to do so) and further to leave (or not to enter) any other Vehicle or any Station."

According to their own rules my wife could drink her Diet Coke, as only alcoholic drinks are excluded. You'd think that Metrolink staff would know the rules they are trying to enforce. 

Metrolink gets a lot of bad press for poor service, broken points etc etc, but that is no one persons fault. This however is, I can't complain about the individual directly as non of the staff wear name badges just "Customer Service Representative". Is this behavior really the offical Metrolink policy or a jobsworth who has nothing better to do than be petty? I'd hope it isn't the first option, but if it is the second I don't want to think what this individual would have done if my wife had fallen as the tram accelerated away or braked sharply as they do? Worrying isn't it.

I look forward to Metrolink's comments on this situation and am sharing this blog in an effort to encourage them to do so, as these days spreading things over social media makes things happen.....  

Where Are Your Manners?

Trams, a source of constant frustration and anger on my daily commute. Even Metrolink couldn't be blamed for this mornings feelings.

I get on the tram at one of its last stops towards Manchester and most days am lucky to get on let alone get a seat (something for a future post I feel) Today wasn't too bad, I could get on and had room to breath. A pregnant lady got on at the same stop as me and of I noticed she was expecting than she must be quite far on!

Did anybody offer this lady their seat when she got on? No of course not. This was made worse firstly by people looking up from their seats, seeing her condition and doing nothing. Secondly when somebody did get off and a seat became free a young lady who was busy reading her Kindle and supping on her coffee dived on the seat. A priory seat for those "disabled, pregnant or less able to stand" no less!

Without sounding like the old man my wife says I'm turning into when I was a kid somebody old, pregnant etc got on and there wasn't a seat people would be climbing over other to offer one. Don't get me wrong I do occasionally see people offer their seat but this morning was a joke.

Yes maybe I or one of my fellow passengers should have said something. But would you have? Would the lady in question want somebody fighting her battles for her? I believe the onus is on the people sitting down to be getting up and offering their seat.

I'm not going to offer any reasons for any this happened or any social commentary on its causes, that is for another blogger to tackle. All I know is what I saw and how it made me feel.

Next time you are on public transport take a look about; it's there somebody else stood up who could use your seat?

A please and thank you wouldn't go a miss either.

Social Media - The Big Man Strikes Again

The BBC recently wrote a piece about social media and airing your gripes with companies in the public domain.

People who know me, know I use Twitter quite a lot and a number of these Tweets are directed at companies or organisations I'm not happy with. Though there are a number of positive ones too.

The article did get me thinking: yes I'm getting replies to my Tweets and quickly too (fifteen minutes for Virgin Money to reply yesterday) but do the responses have any substance to them?

Once again it looks like the big corporations are faceless and full of corporate bull shit. Take the exchange with Virgin Money below:




They don't actually say anything do they? No explanation as to why my ISA rate has dropped twice in the past few months, just batted me away. Somebody somewhere in VM's head office can strike my mention off as dealt with. Hope you get your bonus AD as I'm sure it's coming from my lower interest rate!

Tesco and Transport for Greater Manchester are others who Tweet a lot but say nothing, are you seeing a trend here? Replies are meaningless corporate speak so any outsider will see mentions have been dealt with, or at the very least replied to.

What I have found is that smaller organisations tend to have a more personal responses. I Tweeted Oldham Council it took them a couple of hours to get back to me but they had put a call into the appropriate department to get an answer for me.

I've come to the conclusion that complaining via social media is in the most part gets little or no meaningful response from the "big boys" because it's just a group of faceless graduates on £18k a year dealing with hundreds of mentions. They must have stock responses for every occasion.

The smaller organisations take the time to reply with some thought, it might take them longer but I'd rather have a reply in a day that is useful than one in five minutes that says nothing. The problem is in this day and age everything has to be now.

Is this going to stop me Tweeting the big boys and letting them and the world know what I think? No because I might be Tweeting at the company but for the most part I'm more concerned that the rest of the world knows what I think of these organisations.