BagBlog

I booked some tickets to travel to London for a training course through theTrainLine.com . At the time of booking there was no option to reserve seats, so I phoned the helpline to try to do so. They asked me for booking reference, confirm my name and address, was I the cardholder (no) so I transferred the call to my boss (who is), they asked him for further details for the journey so he transferred them back to me and after all this, they told me that seats had not been released for reservation yet. "When can I reserve then?" I asked. "We don't know, try a week later".

2nd attempt, I tried to cut out all the dialog passing details and asked, "are there seats available for reservation?". "Sorry sir, we have to go through the . . . " laborious dialog follows, ended by being put on hold indefinitely at which point I hung up and tried again.

3rd attempt, my slightly more human assistant managed where the other had not to cut out the details passing and confirmed that seats were not yet released for reservation, "try a week later".

4th attempt, today I tried again. I was very nice to the assistant (I'm always polite - it's not their fault that the system was designed by an imbecile). She managed to cut the crap and cut to the chase. Seats not available to reserve. I asked her to pass on my frustration to her management and told her I would never use theTrainLine.com again. I left my phone number and left it at that.

Although: I then phoned the actual train company and nearly got the brush off, but was at least able to find out that the train I will be travelling on does not have reservable seats at all. Why couldn't theTrainLine.com tell me that when I booked the tickets or when I phoned?

Labels: thetrainline