Thursday, January 03, 2008

Stop press: free money alert!


I should probably visit the First Great Western website more often than I do.
I must admit that, considering the nature of this blog, it is very remiss of me. But, better late than never. A peruse of some of the other websites which are not best friends with FGW (a list of links to which you can find on the right), has led me to find the following link. My thanks to Economy Klaus from First Late Western for being on the ball and bringing it to the attention of his readers.
It is a letter from Andrew Haines, FGW's Chief Operating Officer, apologising about December's bad service, and offering season ticket holders two day's worth of travel vouchers as an apology.
All you have to do is write to the Freepost address provided and give a copy of your ticket, and, hey presto, free vouchers come through the door. My letter is already written and posted. Hopefully the aforementioned vouchers will arrive before I renew my ticket in February.
So, a slightly more Happy New Year after all. I stand corrected.

6 comments:

Lord Hutton said...

My email to Mr Haines recently, resulted in (slight) management action by his minions. Hurrah!

Anonymous said...

after seeing your post, i went on to the fgw website to claim my compensation. It states that you can also email a scanned copy of your season ticket. Thinking this would be easier than posting i thought i'd tried it but guess what....... my message failed to deliver!! They can't even set up an email account properly!!!!

Anonymous said...

fgwfeedback@firstgroup.com

It's been used widely for a long time, I am sure it works correctly, ever considered the fact it might be a problem your end?

Anonymous said...

"Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: Claim for Compensations
Sent: 04/01/2008 16:47

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

fgwfeedback@firstgroup.com on 04/01/2008 16:48
The e-mail system was unable to deliver the message, but did not report a specific reason. Check the address and try again. If it still fails, contact your system administrator.
< mail1.firstgroup.com #5.0.0 smtp; 550 fgwfeedback@firstgroup.com... No such user>"

i think that makes it pretty clear it's not a problem my end

Anonymous said...

Try fgw.feedback@firstgroup.com if not.. I've seen both that and your one advertised.. So if I e-mail FGW I send it to both in the hope that one of them will work..

PeterG said...

Great to see your blog - I found it when trying to register ihatefirstgreatwestern as a blog too! Does that say something FGW???

My ticket price has gone up an inflation busting 8.62% from £58 to £63. To compensate for that the newly introduced 7.32 service from Goring has failed to arrive on time once since Christmas (at least on the days that I have travelled) and has failed to have the free newspaper or catering that is supposed to be on it.

Also, since Christmas there has been no departure/arrival display - just blank screens and no platform announcements. Add to that we still have no ticket machine since it was vandalised in (I think) September last year.

It makes me think of the old joke approprite to this information blackout. We are treated like Mushrooms - kept in the dark and fed on s**t. With the crowded carriages maybe the "Not Mushroom" joke would also fit!

Still on the bright side, the 8.29 arrived on time today (at least I think it was the 8.29, but no announcements and no board, but it was the train that arrived at 8.29 and duly headed towards Paddington!).