We had numerous direct complaints from our members and supporters about short, overcrowded, cancelled and delayed trains last week. One Dunton Green commuter took over 3 hours, 5 trains and a bus to reach London Bridge. From Twitter we could see that this was common across the network – with some commuters saying that 10 out 10 journeys had been late. So Southeastern’s customers had a bad week – and it showed that at times Southeastern seemed overwhelmed in its capacity to manage and to communicate.
Among the problems we noted:
- there were signal failures in the London Bridge/Charing Cross area on Monday and Wednesday morning peaks. There had been major engineering work in the area over Christmas, although Southeastern claimed that at least one of these was not associated with that work. Worryingly Network Rail were not able to make a permanent fix.
- there were broken down trains at Chelsfield, at Hildenborough and at Wadhurst.
- there were landslips on the Hastings Line and the Maidstone East to Ashford line, presumably as result of heavy rain. Trains were suspended for a time, and then had to run slowly. The Hastings line is now closed from mid-evening in the coming week for engineering work.
- the new timetable for the closure of Dover-Folkestone line did not seem to be working well, with trains to London pulling out just as replacement buses arrived.
- the shortening of our trains to provide rolling stock. This affected not only Sevenoaks but also Tonbridge and Paddock Wood – with passengers having to stand all the way from Paddock Wood and with passengers unable to board at all at Sevenoaks. The “apology” notice at Sevenoaks station about Dover makes no mention of shorter trains; nor does the Southeastern website.
- there were widespread delays on Friday morning which Southeastern blamed on rail conditions due to “icy weather”. Most passengers thought that the weather was mild – and certainly not as icy as would be normal for January.
- there were other short formations, presumably due to the failure of stock and the absence of any spares.
- there are lots of engineering works this weekend causing further annoyance to passengers – with all too common tales of the few trains run being short and overcrowded and of replacement buses not turning up.
- problems were amplified by known issues about how Southeastern run the network to manage costs, including train crews being delayed when travelling as passengers so unavailable to take over their scheduled trains
Southeastern would say that some of the root causes were outside their control. It’s certainly true that it was not a good week for Network Rail either. But with 48% of the fares and subsidy paid to Southeastern ending up with Network Rail we expect Southeastern to be doing a better job of ensuring that Network Rail do the job that they are paid to do. And Southeastern do have the job of managing the network and communicating with passengers. Last week showed how Southeastern still lack the capacity to react, to communicate and to minimise passenger inconvenience when things go wrong and how easily they are overwhelmed by multiple events.
We will be talking to Southeastern about this shortly. We would be very interested to hear your views and your experiences in the last week.
I think potentially the largest problem SE have is communication. Their Twitter team can do nothing but offer platitudes and just tell people to email customer services, whereas other organisations twitter team ARE their customer services team and can actually get things done ( BA, O2, Virgin Trains to name but a few).
They also have a nasty habit of making things up if they don’t know the answer, and they get caught out like they did last week. They were tweeting that the morning delays had nothing to do with the landslip, and a commuter was on the broken down train causing the problems tweeting that the guard has just told them that the train had failed due to power supply problems caused by the landslip.
The moral of the story is if you don’t know the answer just say so – the commuters would have a lot more respect for that!
If the service didn’t cost so much it wouldn’t seem so bad, but with some people paying nearly 25% of their disposable income to get to work, its understandable which this is such a passionate issue.
Some people say oh SE isn’t as bad as some train companies – look at virgin trains who lead the table in customer complaints….the reason why Virgin lead the table in customer complaints is that they hand out money off vouchers to customer complaints for almost any reason. People don’t complain enough to SE because its a waste of time…
At Dunton Green, the biggest problem appears to be that SE simply don’t care. The bridge lights have now failed ~5 times this winter with each fix lasting days at best. They simply don’t seem to care about the root cause of the issue and that this is a serious Health & Safety problem as the shelters and other platform lights are also impacted. To top it off, the platforms were very icy last Friday as SE didn’t seem to notice that it had got a bit colder and that some salt would be required. Plus, the permit to travel machine is out of order on a weekly basis.
It shouldn’t take customers to flag these issues – DG is a 3 minute train ride from Sevenoaks. Surely the station manager could pop up a couple of times a day to inspect his station and flag urgent repairs?
The sooner TFL take over the Metro route, the better. 2018 is too far away.
@james
The figures Southeastern supply to ORR on the number of complaints is certainly low compared to the number of journeys. And sometimes Southeastern’s response when we pass on members’ views is “well, nobody complained to us”. But:
The last point then influences customer behaviour. If customers do not believe that Southeastern will even listen to their complaints, let alone act on them, what is the point of complaining?
@paul
We’ve heard that Southeastern policy is that each unmanned station is supposed to be visited at least one a day, but there appears to be no evidence that this happens – and it is certainly difficult to explain why so many problems go unactioned if it does.
@secretary. Exactly…if you have already been delayed you don’t then want to waste another 30 minutes of your day complaining when you know all you will get back is platitudes. I remember well the stupid comment of the MD last year when he was responding to the chaos surrounding the London Bridge work – “it’s only a few Twitter users complaining.” How out of touch and disrespectful, but then when you run a monopoly that the government doesn’t care about you can say and do what you like. It’s a pity their aren’t a few more marginal parliamentary seats in the Weald…..
SE certainly visit Dunton Green on a regular basis, in the form of burly revenue protection officers.
@nick How can they check the tickets if there are no lights? Do they bring torches?!
Bad week it was and I would not mind if it was a one off combination of events. Unfortunately not, even when the weather is fine, trains can be messed up, mine are late about 90% of time (that is, not arrived on time, none of this 5 minutes nonsense). When my train was on time in November, for two days running, I was shocked! And often, when the weather and other circumstances are not favourable, Southeastern seem to be completely taken by surprise and do not learn from their mistakes, ever (a sad but true cliche). Now, it is getting colder and we all know it. Will there be salt at stations? Will there be preparations in place to ensure drivers and conductors can get to their trains on time? Will there be extra care in maintaining the tracks?
As for their customer service. When I do, I get a reply along the lines of, we do not have the answer for you. I ask again and get ignored. They are happy though, they replied within 10 days and ticked the box, even though it is of no use to me. Their Twitter staff may be useful in answering very few immediate questions, but their role seems to be mainly saying sorry (has anyone counted what % these are?), go to customer care, and taking the abuse that people vent.
Heating this winter has been abysmal; too hot on all Thameslink trains and most Southeastern, especially when so crowded, windows have to be opened. So it is either that, or heating is off completely. They seem unable to control the temperature on the train, why – it is beyond me.
Southeastern excuses are hilarious. I was waiting for a late train, station announced it was rail conditions; website – they were waiting for staff; The guard said, they were stuck at the red light for 15 minutes. Take your pick.
And don’t get me started with frequent unexpected changes of platform with seconds to spare (twice last week when going via Swanley – free exercise at 7am thank you very much) and when trains depart 1 minute before due departure, not usual but happened to me way too many times.
All of the Southeastern journeys I’ve made so far this year have been delayed, most more than 15 mins, three more than 30 mins. Several times this week and last there have been complete and utter meltdowns at Cannon Street in the evening, lasting most of the evening, with many cancellations and lengthy delays – always with little or no useful or accurate information.
I never know exactly how I’m going to get home – frequently the service is so all over the place that I abandon the attempt to do my ‘normal’ journey (Cannon Street to Grove Park and then the shuttle to Bromley North). I find there is such chaos and so little accurate information, that it is better to jump on whatever train is leaving next, and get home by bus from some random destination that’s within range of Bromley. This often takes an extra hour or so, but is still quicker than standing at Cannon Street like an idiot, awaiting information and trains that may never come – especially since those of us who have to reach Bromley North usually miss that connection and then have to wait ages on a freezing platform for the next service, anyway. (Southeastern’s get out of jail free card for that one is that ‘it’s not a connection’ – when it clearly is!) Better to go to Lee or Clock House or Lewisham and get a bus, rather than hang around in complete uncertainty in the crowds of Cannon Street.
The services, when they do run, are simply never, ever on time. They are also all boiling hot, with people fanning themselves and opening all the windows, even in icy weather (when we do have coats etc. on, and many people cannot move enough in the crowded cattle truck conditions to remove their coats).
In the morning, I check on apps, CommuteLondon being the best, to see how the service is running, and it is usually on ‘red’. Therefore I often take a longer, but much more reliable, route in, going on Thameslink from Bromley South to Farringdon, and then getting buses to work from there. However, because of the frequent need to do this, I have to pay for a zone 1-5 season ticket instead of 1-4, since Bromley South is in zone 5.
The London Bridge situation is not only chaotic because of the mishandling of the long-term platform closures, and the associated reduction in available services, but also because the signalling issues and trespass incidents etc. never seem to be resolved, and just keep on recurring, with disruption always lasting many hours. The excuses from southeastern are non-stop and ludicrous, blaming random things like sunshine(!) or pointing the finger at Network Rail as though they themselves bear no responsibility. My answer to that is that I purchase my ticket from southeastern and part of their job is to manage the relationship with NR so that there is more resilience and better mitigation when meltdowns happen, as they do several times per week. Southeastern resorts to blame games too easily.
They also have a worse history than other London TOCs when it comes to withdrawing the entire service on a ‘just in case’ basis, eg when there is snow forecast. In general there appears to be no form of weather at all that does not somehow adversely affect their ability to run a service.
Their customer service is non-existent, which is why people don’t bother complaining formally through their old-fashioned and unresponsive systems, and their information provision to customers is appalling – when things go wrong, they largely fall silent, and do not appear to know what is going on, or when the service will recover. Or they say completely meaningless things like ‘delays caused by congestion’ or ‘congestion caused by delays’. They are sneaky too, marking trains ‘on time’ even though they are not going to run, and then disappearing them quietly off the board with no explanation. They make no adjustments for people to catch connections, and never provide any replacement bus services on my route – if the Bromley North shuttle is out of action, we are just sent outside to get the normal buses at Grove Park, which are infrequent and will often not fit all of the people waiting on board.
We’ve had a number of different operators over the years, but it has never, ever been as bad as this before. Not that you’d know it from the clearly faked performance stats. Their whole attitude stinks – sometimes I think they respond to our complaints on twitter and so on as if it is a free service they are running. They seem to forget we are each are paying them thousands of pounds! It baffles and angers me that they continue to be allowed to get away with it, while making eye-watering profits. I can only assume the politicians responsible have their eye on board seats when they stop being MPs. You have to wonder.
Even worse tonight, and it got dangerously overcrowded at Cannon Street around 6.20pm. People on twitter are so angry! Me included.
Hi – and thanks for your brilliant work!
Just a quick bit of feedback on my experience in the severe dispruption last night (Thurs 14 Jan) in case useful.
I was on the 18.06 from Waterloo East – and there was not a single information announcement to passengers throughout the entire one and a quarter hours it took to get to Sevenoaks.
An auto message was played while still waiting to leave Waterloo East platform, saying the service was being delayed due to signalling problems – but nothing else for the whole journey. No updates, no indication as to where the problem was and how long the delay might be, etc – and no announcement from a person rather than auto message.
All the best.
Martin Drewry
I have beyond appalled at the service since the beginning of this year. Since I went back to work on 4 January I have been delayed either going to work, or coming home every single day. In fact most days trains are late running both ways. 10 minute delays may not mean much to South Eastern – in fact, don’t they consider that to be still “on time”? But when it is the same thing every morning and/or evening it becomes beyond annoying. The other morning we were running 15 mins late and there was no announcement by either the conductor or driver until I Tweeted and then, miraculously, one of them found their voice.
Excuses, when they can be bothered to communicate, are myriad and go from the sublime to the ridiculous. In fact one driver one day went so far as to say he didn’t know what was happening other than it was a “complete balls-up”.
South Eastern’s whole attitude, certainly from the management, is that customers are an irritant, always complaining and never satisfied. They play the blame game to the ‘nth degree – it’s always someone else’s fault. They really just don’t care, and they show it, in more ways than one.