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The daily grind

The beauty of twitter is it has allowed all us disgruntled commuters to get together and have a right good moan. What it doesn’t do is solve any of the underlying problems with the service. Pick one of your favourites: train so full I can’t get on, train so delayed I’m late regularly, train is lost in the Bermuda Triangle (or delayed engineering works, if you’re less creatively-minded), train is too small for number of passengers, train is too expensive for me to afford food (or on other side of the coin First Class has steerage passengers in it, get ‘em out the cheeky bar stewards)… You name it, the @SW_Trains twitter account has heard it (I know because I read it daily – you could call me a train spotter I suppose) 

From what I gather the twitterati over there are very good, they always answer, try and provide up to date information and warn of delays. But is that what it should be set up for? Isn’t it a rather sad indictment of service levels when all your social media team are doing is fire fighting? And how many of you have actually had queries resolved through using it? I don’t even try and lodge complaints with South West Trains a) lucky for them, I’m pretty lazy b) my assumption, from reading others moaning to the social team about a lack of response, is that they won’t answer me anyway. 

Tomorrow between 2 and 4, when most people are at work and therefore do not really have the time to participate, South West Trains are holding an ‘ask the director’ session online. And who are these directors? Well according to @SW_Trains other than the MD, a Mr Shoveller (Shoveller Shite, as I once rather cruelly tagged him) they are all nameless. I don’t know about you but I’ve worked in large corporate companies and there are directors for all sorts. For example say they have a PR Director who is attending – really how much sway are you going to hold by their response? They’re duty bound to mould the truth to whatever the party line is. I will submit questions to be answered, but as with the twitter feed, I don’t expect a single thing to change as a result. 

And judging from the reaction I get daily from commuters eager to vent a collective angry spleen, neither do you.

COMING SOON: Raking the muck. Questions for Mr Shoveller - which I would wager, he will not answer succintly.