General Chat

My daughter got a train from Worthing to London yesterday, to see a friend who lives alone.
She caught the 9:45 pm train home.
This was a 'straight through' train, back to Littlehampton, calling at Worthing.

Whilst on the train, passengers were informed the train would be terminating at Brighton, and there would be no more trains on the Littlehampton route (normally they run until after midnight, and start again at 4:00am).

As the train was nearing Brighton, they were told, by a guard, that the 700 bus from Brighton was taking train tickets.
The station the train terminated at was the coastal station, this meant a one and a half mile walk through Brighton - if you knew where the stop was.
One lady was very upset about this.
Daughter walked to the stop with the scared lady - they missed one bus, so were forced to wait half an hour for the next one.

At the bus stop, they met a couple of cyclists who had been on the train - they were headed for Littlehampton, but the bus wouldn't take them. They were expected (despite having train tickets) to cycle the 2 + hours to their destination.

The bus eventually arrived. The scared lady had a ticket to Littlehampton - unfortunately, although this bus DID go to Littlehampton during the day, it stopped going that far at 4:40pm. After that time, it only went as far as Marine Parade, Worthing. This meant a huge taxi bill for the lady.
It also meant either a half hour walk home for my daughter, or a taxi.
She lives a 10 minute walk away from the railway station. :-|

A journey that should have taken one and a half hours, took over 3 hours.

I hope somebody has complained to whichever train company that was how awful.

Daughter will be complaining - and I expect the cyclists will, too!

I think I remember, some years back, being told that if you couldn't continue your journey by train, through some fault of theirs, they had to pay for taxis to get you home. I think that was Virgin, but I expect something similar applies to all companies.

I've just googled and all companies pay some sort of compensation. The amount depends on the company, the length of the delay and the price of your ticket.

It says you should look at the company's website for details. Good luck to your daughter.

Thanks Andysmum.
I'm intrigued about what the cyclists did.

My son says the same as Andysmum. Even though they were told to take the bus Ha ha) he says they should have got a taxi and reclaimed the money.

So, not only risking the safety of passengers, they fed them false, or in some cases, no, information, too. :-| :-| :-|

There's also the point that, the passenger would have to pay for the taxi.
Not everyone can afford huge taxi fares - even if they will get the money back at a later date.

Been thinking about this in the bath (as you do). Now, I don't know much about the 'Consumer Protection Act' but it does occur to me that they certainly failed i their duty of care an that the service supplied was not adequate or that implied in the contract.

No doubt Meridian would be interested too. It seems you can get on there for making a neat sandwich!

Thanks, Sharron, I'll let her know.