Dear Mr. Booth
To start; I hope I have your correct job title? There seems to be some discrepancy between Abellio’s and your points of view on this.
Now down to why I’m writing to you; I have the misfortune of travel daily with Abellio Greater Anglia between Colchester and London. The service I receive is well below that of a service I would expect for an annual fee in excess of £5,700.
This summer has been particularly challenging as an Abellio customer, with continuous delays to service, short formations on an unacceptably regular basis, dirty, broken, ageing carriages and incredibly misinformed and at times rude staff.
I have frequently turned to social media for answers, at times getting them, but more often than not just simply being fobbed off. As an example on the 2nd July 2014 I sent the following tweet:
Great work with the English language @greateranglia "Cruise Ship Boat Trains"? pic.twitter.com/ZSVVmqcFRc
— Dan Maby 🧡 (@danmaby) July 2, 2014
As you see I received the response:
“Hi Dan, thanks for pointing that out – I’ll feed your comments back.”
Three months later on the 2nd October 2014 the term “Cruise Ship Boat Train” still present:
I digress; I have recently been offered a fantastic new opportunity that, although doesn’t free me from the travel monopoly of Abellio Greater Anglia, it does require me to cancel my current annual season ticket.
This is the latest source of pain caused by Abellio; it stated with a trip to one of the two ticket offices at Colchester station. Having explained my requirement to cancel my season ticket to the member of staff I was informed and I quote:
“I have the wrong type of computer here, you’ll need to go to the other side of the platform”
Having then taken the required trip to find the right ‘type’ of computer I was met with the news that there is a £10 administration charge to cancel a ticket. Now as I’m sure you can imagine this was not news that impressed me.
I’m attempting to cancel a ticket that has over five months remaining so you can see we are talking about a sizeable amount of money.
To add more misery I was then informed that payment could take up to 28 days to be paid into my account. When I questioned this I was informed that, and again I quote:
“the money needs to be transferred and held in our [Abellio] account”
I have no idea why my money would need to be “held” in Abellio’s account?
I do believe that when I paid for the ticket payment was taken immediately from my account. I ask why does Abellio feel it is acceptable to take up to 28 days to issue refunds?
One very unhappy customer.
Regards
Dan Maby