Tuesday, June 19, 2007

The logic of V/line yet again ........

Sorry, been absent for a bit. Have kind of given up on regular whinging and settled into the apathetic chant of "at least I get home eventually".

Tonight deserves special mention for a good demonstration of V/Line logic on how to piss off the maximum amount of customers as possible at once.

This was achieved by various means. Firstly by cancelling the 4.13pm (which is a stop all stations train) and obviously not informing those passengers that the next train (the 4.40pm service) is an EXPRESS service & the next stop all stations is the 4.55pm

The end result? An overcrowded 4.40pm which did not depart on time & whose passengers were left uninformed (as usual) as to what the delay was. To add insult to injury, the charming conductor cheerfully announces that we would now become a stop all stations service due to the cancellation of the previous train.

So bad luck to anyone who had any plans for tonight or who were hoping to make it to Geelong on time (for the record we were 30 minutes late eventually).

Amazingly, we still sat at the station until 4.50pm! So the logic of making the 4.40pm a stop all stations was made a mockery of when 5 minutes later the 4.55pm would leave anyway!

Let's not mention the faux pax from the lovely conductor when she announced "let's hope we get to Geelong in ONE piece" ... ummm even I cringed at that callous & thoughtless remark. Given the trajedy recently in Kerang, you'd have hoped she would have engaged her brain before saying something as stupid as that.

Well done V/line, for continuing the poor service & failing to inform your passengers in a timely fashion and choosing the most illogical way to solve issues.

let's not mention the two or three times when the 4.40pm hasn't run (or run late) and the 4.55pm was overcrowded. Luckily each time that happened I'd already bailed on the 4,40pm and gone and got a seat on the 4.55pm - no thanks to lack of announcements from Vline about what was going on!