12 December 2007 by Doug Imrie
I'm on a train, again, heading to Manchester for a meeting. When I tried to book my ticket online yesterday I got as far as the payment gateway and the system crashed. A few phone calls later it turned out that the whole National Rail Booking System had failed and no travel tickets could be issued online, via call centre or at the railway stations.
Now, these things happen but what annoyed me the most was that with the system still down at 23:00 last night I couldn't buy a ticket until I got to Waverley station in Edinburgh this morning - and the price difference? When I was trying to book online a 1st Class Return was showing up at just under £76 whereas this morning at the station it was £230! On the promise of a refund of the difference if I wrote a letter of complaint I purchased the ticket and proceeded to enjoy a rather nice 'Full British' in the restaurant car on my way down to York with National Express East Coast. Things got even better when I returned to my seat after breakfast and started chatting to a fellow passenger who turned out to be a Customer Services Manager with the aforementioned franchisee - to cut a long story short... "Thanks David for sorting things out with my fare!"
And the moral of the story is... automated systems are only as good as the people supporting them!
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