First ScotRail: 54 days and counting. Shame on you

Regular readers will know that occasionally I talk about travel woes. International flight travel has become the equivalent of attending for an anal probe, domestic UK travel isn’t much better. But when you can’t get a refund and the scripted responses are bland and uninformative then what do you do? Why take a leaf out of United Breaks Guitars of course! That’s what Jamie Anderson has done under the song title of 54 Days and Counting. It only runs a couple of minutes but says it all

Long story short: Jamie booked some travel. Had to cancel. Asked for refund. 54 days later and no refund. He’s blogged about it under the title: First ScotRail and the Shitty Customer Experience. As of now, Jamie has gone FIVE rounds of call and email in an attempt to get his money back. Here’s an example at Round 4:

ROUND 4:

Customer (Jamie Anderson)
29/01/2010 02:42 PM
I have STILL not received this refund. I want to know the following:
1. Why is it taking so long?
2. When will I receive my money back?
3. I want this complaint escalated IMMEDIATELY to someone who can resolve this for me.
I do not want a ‘we will look into it response’ I want a response that tells me exactly when I will be getting my money back.
This service has been a total and utter disgrace and I have now been waiting 47 calendar days to have my account recredited.
regards,
Jamie Anderson

Response (Andrew Woods)
29/01/2010 05:56 PM
Dear Jamie,
Thank you for writing back to us.
I am sorry to learn that you have not received a refund till now.
I have raised this matter with the Refunds Department as it is still under investigation. I understand your dissatisfaction as it is taking a long time for this procedure.
Furthermore, I acknowledge your feedback about this matter. I have passed your feedback to the appropriate team to ensure this issue is addressed promptly.
I understand that your experience with us has not been good. However I assure you that at First ScotRail, it is our constant endeavour to meet and exceed our customer’s expectations and sincerely hope you will give us another opportunity to serve you better in the future.
Kind regards,
Andrew

ROUND 4 VERDICT: Another Round to Scotrail but at least someone with a sensible name this time. They still have my money and they are right they have exceeded my expectations. My expectation was that they were marginally incompetent but perhaps well meaning. Now I think they are just a shower of c*nts.

Does anyone actually know WTF is going on with this bunch of losers?

This is oh so typical of the parlous state of customer service. Why do we put up with it? Often we have very little choice. At a time when we are being encouraged to use public transport instead of gas guzzling, polluting cars you’d have thought First ScotRail would realize the value of keeping customers happy. Obviously not.

Tagged as: Add new tag, First ScotRail