Northbound train pulling into Bletchley railway station

23 December 2010

Virgin on bad taste









Am I being over-sensitive in finding the above retweet from @virgintrains appalling?  The original tweet from ohbex was fine (if he/she was pleased with the service then they are very welcome to say so) but I personally think Virgin are wrong in using it for marketing purposes.

Many people have had their travel to/from work, friends and family disrupted this week, and the problems aren't yet over.  Anyone who has been monitoring Twitter will have seen many posts highlighting Virgin Trains' monopoly of the fast line into Euston.  While the London Midland fast services have been switched to the slow line where they have crawled behind the all-stops trains, the Virgin Pendolinos have continued to roar past, apparently untouched by the weather.

When things go wrong on the West Coast Main Line and the Virgin Trains services appear to be given priority, London Midland passengers are left fuming.  OK, their trains have further to travel but we've paid our fares too (and can be paying more to travel 40-50 miles than some Virgin passengers will have paid to do 200+).

If this were the first time that @virgintrains had decided to forward a passenger compliment during a difficult period for travellers using other operators' services then it wouldn't be so bad, but they have 'previous' on this. 

Unfortunately, even if Virgin Trains read this blog post they probably still wouldn't get the point, so we should probably just be grateful that @londonmidland has a much better idea of what is and is not appropriate  ;-)




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