"Due to technical problems..." - Stuart Pinfold's Blog

A company I have long complained about, First Capital Connect (FCC), ceases to be tomorrow. A new franchise operator, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), takes over on the same date. Over the years I have come to realise that actually FCC actually have very little control over the things that used to make me angry. The only thing they really could control was the communication and recovery plan at times of disruption. This was, and is, top of my complaints list but the others – ticket prices, lack of seats, amount of engineering work disrupting journeys, slow pace of innovation, etc – were being dictated to them by government. Maybe not directly, but certainly indirectly by FCC’s attitude of “we not contracted to do it, we’re not gonna do it”.

So I am writing this blog post on Saturday night, on the very last journey I will take with FCC for at least seven years, the initial duration of GTR’s franchise contract. I thought I would take a look at what GTR are promising for their franchise. I may revisit this post after the expected delivery dates to see how progress is going. This refers only to the Thameslink line, part of an expanded franchise area covering around 1 in 5 of all train journeys in the UK once fully up and running.

New Trains

A new fleet of Siemens trains are promised between 2016 and 2018 to replace the ageing (early 1970s and counting) existing metal boxes. You may remember the furore when Bombardier lost the bid to provide these trains; this was under FCC’s franchise – not that it matters because the train operator has no say in the design or competitive process. All they’ll do is stick their stickers on the side and cover the seats in their chosen company colours.

More reliable and faster services

At the time of writing, there is a news article on GTR’s holding site stating they are “pleased to announce” that the Bedford-Brighton service pattern (4 trains per hour, more at peak times, less overnight) will be retained. That’s great news but ideally we would be treated to more services in the shoulders of the peak. They also say they will double the extreme overnight service from 1 train to 2 trains per hour, between Gatwick and Luton airports.

Once the Thameslink Programme is complete, up to 24 trains per hour will run through the central London “core” between St Pancras International and London Bridge – again, great news as long as there is contingency plans if there is disruption in this section. At the moment, a single train breaking down at, say, Farringdon (where drivers make the switch between overheard power lines used in the north and third-rail in the south) can cripple the service due to the single-track in this section. With more trains running through, and thus more risk, there absolutely has to be a quick decision (and implementation) to split the service and provide a northern branch starting and terminating at St Pancras, and a southern equivalent to and from London Bridge, until the central lines are clear again. This should be possible with the extra paths going in to connect the Thameslink line to the Great Northern line in order to quickly turn around trains at St Pancras without ending up with a backlog.

Easier journeys and better information

This is the major gripe I had with First Capital Connect. There was very little information about a service until it arrived on the platform. GTR are promising, by this November, to introduce a mobile phone app which gives live ‘loading’ information about their trains. I’d hope this tells you exactly how many carriages it has (FCC were normally right on the dot-matrix systems on the platform, but not always, resulting in a run down the platform and a crush in the front or back carriage when a shorter train arrived), the number or percentage of seats still available, and where it is scheduled to stop. Another part of the app would be a carpark availability display – this would be invaluable for me as I often arrive at the car park to either get one of the last three spaces, or have just been beaten to them and then have to either pay more in the adjacent car park (which doesn’t have off-peak pricing), or try my luck at the next Thameslink station down the line, a fifteen minute drive.

“Real-time running information (audio and visual) on all trains by 2016” is another promise GTR are making. I’m not sure I understand this – I’d prefer the driver to manually tell us what is going on when there are problems, rather than an automated voice with the only pre-record available being “due to problems on the line”, or whatever that day’s excuse is.

A bid bonus for me would be the way they are proposing to structure their fares, as well as offering advanced tickets for the first time (that I remember) on the Thameslink route. GTR propose introducing smart cards, part-time season tickets, making a “peak outbound and off-peak inbound” (or vice-versa) ticket which is cheaper than the current options of buying a peak return, or two single tickets, both of which are very expensive and not pro-rata of the full peak return; and working with TfL to extend the Oyster service out to Gatwick and Luton airports.

I’d hope the smartcard – branded as “the key” – really is smart enough to work out the cheapest price ticket for your journeys – not just on a daily basis, but on an annual or at least monthly basis. If I originally put return daily tickets on the smartcard, but then spend more in a year than if I had just bought an annual ticket, I would expect to never be charged again until the next 365-day period begins.

Responsive to customer priorities on station and on train

There is the usual bumph here about improving CCTV, more toilets and new information screens. One interesting idea that stands out is a £1m “annual fund (from 2016) for local communities to spend on improvements to small stations [with a footfall of less than] 1m [passengers]”. Putting aside the question of why this money will take so long to arrive, it would be great to see garden areas maintained, better accessible facilities, more staff on-station, improved catering facilities (especially if community-run) and possibly heritage information and displays.

Another idea which grabs my attention is “free WiFi at 104 stations”. Although no mention is made of which stations (I assume the larger and central London ones, as 104 isn’t very many when considering the whole of the enlarged Thameslink franchise area), there is no mention of any WiFi on trains. In 2014, on a very large commuter route, you would expect this – not necessarily free, but at least available. I would suggest maybe £1 per journey or up to £250 a year for WiFi on all trains would be a good and popular pricing point.

What else could they do?

I would love to see on my train network:

• A monthly/quarterly free magazine, advertising-funded, highlighting events across the network, a monthly focus on different areas, the latest performance figures and franchise news, engineering works information and competitions.
• A review of “delay repay”. Currently, train companies receive compensation from Network Rail after 5 minutes of delays when the fault lies in their domain (signals, tracks, etc); however the customer can only claim when the delay is over 30 minutes. If you arrive 29 minutes late, you get nada. This system is infinitely better than the previous franchise (also Govia) whereby season tickets were discounted based on the previous year’s performance, but daily ticket holders (or those not renewing their season ticket for whatever reason) got nothing at all for any delay.
• Work with the taxi operators at smaller station when there is disruption. FCC used to promise a bus which would arrive at some unspecified point in the future (even longer during the morning peak, when they were all being used for school services), which would then proceed to call at every other small station en route to a larger one. Why not use the taxi operators at stations like Harlington or Radlett to get people to Bedford/Luton/St Albans/wherever the service is running from? First Group would have argued that – as a bus company – they have access to buses on-demand; in practice this never worked very well, meaning people were left at stations with no access to any transport and no information about when, or if, it would arrive. A deal with the taxis to get them to a larger station or even – shock horror – a rival train operating company’s station would be in the best interests of passengers during disruption.
• On that theme, I would love to see better co-operation with other stations, and even other TOCs, which goes wider than just accepting tickets for train travel. FCC used to operate the Thameslink and Great Northern lines, which will continue under GTR. However, while a Flitwick-London train ticket would be made valid for travel from, say, Hitchin instead, there was no such arrangement even with car park tickets (ironically, operated by the same company). Plus that didn’t help if both lines were disrupted, something more likely to happen when trains from both routes start travelling through the central London core. Why not start negotiations with London Midland, Virgin Trains and other operators south of the capital to get a “whole package” of help with trains are disrupted?

What are your hopes for the new train operator? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below.

First Capital Connect (FCC) have really played a blinder in the last 24 hours. I’m always quick – sometimes too quick – to criticise the  company which runs trains between Bedford, Brighton, Luton and south London… but this stuff could almost be lifted straight from Page 1 of the book of how-not-to-upset-your-paying-customers.

It started last night – Thursday 31st May – when I received an SMS message timed at 20:02 (that’s just after 8 in the evening) from RingGo. The company arranges pay-by-phone parking at over 3,000 car parks in the UK, making it easy to pay for parking if you have no cash, as well as providing parking attendants to check tickets and issue fines as necessary. The company – until yesterday – offered this service at all FCC car parks. The text message read:

“We are sorry from 1st June RingGo is no longer provided at FCC stations. For info please call FCC on email ”

My first thought was “Why are RingGo telling me this and not FCC?” Then the date in the message suddenly registered: that’s tomorrow! RingGo/FCC had given users under 6 hours notice (daily parking sessions expire at 2am the day after) of the change, and the only communication offered did not mention how – or even if – a pay-by-phone service would continue to exist. One member of the Facebook group “I Hate First Capital Connect” reportedly spent 45 minutes on the telephone in a queue, only to be cut off shortly after reaching a human without getting any answers. The section on the FCC website regarding parking (screenshot, right – click to enlarge) confirms that a new operator – APCOA – will take over from RingGo and provide a similar service.

Some questions which genuinely require answering – but still haven’t been as of 10am on the 1st June – are to do with season ticket holders and multi-day ticket holders, for which RingGo will have already processed the payment. Presumably APCOA will have their own separate payment system, separate staff to check tickets and issue fines who will be carrying equipment which links to APCOA’s – not RingGo’s – database, and possibly different parking rates and fees. So if someone purchased a three-day ticket via RingGo yesterday, their car registration and payment details won’t show up on APCOA’s computer and they could be liable for a fine. What happens with annual ticket holders who are seven months through their RingGo session – will they have to purchase a new season ticket starting today, and will they get a refund on the unused portion from RingGo? The answer is probably not – their parking contract will probably have been passed on to APCOA (which raises Data Protection issues, but let’s not go there…) but the point remains that no information or clarification about this was available.

So who’s to blame for this change of heart – First Group or RingGo? A message on the RingGo website from March 2011 seems to suggest that this was forced on them by First Great Western (FGW) – another First Group train operating company – possibly in breach of contract. A forum thread on the FGW website from the same time period suggests that this change was made by First Group with less than a week’s notice to its users. First Group apparently have form in this area.

OK, so we didn’t get any communication from First about this change, and if it wasn’t for RingGo telling its customers – presumably at its own cost, and while in dispute with its business partner – no-one would be any the wiser come this morning. But if we’re just swapping one supplier for another – which happens constantly in every other business – there’s no problem, right? Well, assuming quality of service improves or the price decreases accordingly, that statement would probably be true. Unfortunately cutting service quality is another area in which First Group have previous experience, from ticket office opening hours to charging for cash machine withdrawals which were previously free.

So how does APCOA compare to RingGo? This only uses what I have seen this morning before I have even used the service to park (first time today, I will need to purchase a daily off-peak ticket later this morning).

First thing I did was go onto the APCOA Connect website. The registration button was easily found and clicked on. But useability obviously isn’t an important priority for APCOA. The first step of registration – email address validation – doesn’t allow you to use the + character in an email address, despite it being valid. The activation link then went straight into my Gmail spam.

Once your email address is confirmed, you are invited to set a password and enter your credit card details. However there is no information anywhere on the site showing which cards are accepted and which are not. I entered my American Express card details  in and it didn’t complain about it – the real test will be when I come to process a payment! If APCOA do accept AmEx, it will be an improvement over RingGo, which only accepted Visa and Mastercard. (Update: APCOA do not accept American Express, yet the site doesn’t complain if you enter an AmEx card number. It only tells you when you try to process a payment while on the phone)

The same page enables you to fill out your vehicle information. Having entered my full registration number in the first step, I expected this to be filled out automatically using DVLA’s data – this would have also determined whether the vehicle was eligible for FCC’s “green car” parking discount.

We are then asked for our “preferred parking location” (screenshot, left – click to enlarge) which unfortunately is a list in a scrollable frame, rather than a text box which filters out locations based on what you type, which would have made this much more user-friendly.

Hooray! I was then completely registered and ready to use APCOA. As I normally do, I went into my user settings to check everything was in order and found that there was still some “optional” information I could fill out to complete my profile – one of which was my address, presumably required for APCOA to process my payment (when was the last time someone was able to process your payment without confirming your home postcode and house number with the bank?). Surely this should have been required at point of registration to make the payment process later on much easier?

There is also a page titled “Parking reminders”. RingGo used to have these – a text message service which messaged you confirmation of your parking session, and a reminder before it expired (in FCC’s case, sent at around 22:30 the night before at – it stressed in the message – a “sociable time” rather than shortly before 2am). However APCOA’s reminders configuration screen (screenshot, right – click to enlarge) makes little sense. What on earth is “ivr”, and what is the difference between “sms” and “smartphone”, how does it know what phone you have? Why are they all ticked by default when it states it costs 10p per message, but you only discover you can save 60p on your parking session if you happen to be nosing through your settings, rather than asking you at registration?

Talking about smartphones, RingGo had a fantastic downloadable app which allowed you to simply enter your parking location code and the length of time you wanted to park for, and submit your payment in about 30 seconds without having to phone a service. APCOA (on Android at least) which – given the rising popularity of smart handheld devices – is a definite disadvantage.

[UPDATE: OK, after reading through this "Reminder Options" page again, I think you can configure reminders based on HOW you pay for the parking session - IVR (telephoning the number), SMS (sending a text) or smartphone (via some non-existant app). In other words, you can have a confirmation if you phone or text, but not if you pay by smartphone, for example. But it's not very well explained at all]

Other things I have seen mentioned this morning but cannot confirm:

• APCOA uses an 0845 number. RingGo used to use a local (in the case of Flitwick station, 01525) number. This will cost mobile users more to call. (Correction – Actually, they do use a local-rate number – 01895, which is the area code for Uxbridge.)
• APCOA apparently considers the end of the day to be midnight (Correction – APCOA sessions still expire at 2am). RingGo sessions [also] used to expire at 02:00. This was always an anomoly as train tickets are valid until 04:30 the next day – in other words, if you bought a train ticket on Wednesday evening at 21:00 and returned at 03:00, you would only need a “daily” train ticket, but would need two daily parking tickets (one valid 21:00-02:00, one valid 02:01 for a further 24 hours when you only need it to be valid for another hour).
• Some FCC customers are reporting that parking is free today due to the car parks not being ready for the new provider (Update – in fact, it wasn’t free but @FirstCC on Twitter promised that no-one would be penalised as a result of being unable to purchase a parking session – this carried on for more than a week!). If customers were only given six hours’ notice, can you imaging trying to replace all the signage and ‘traditional’ machines (RingGo was offered alongside cash/card payment machines which printed a physical ticket to display on the dashboard) in all the FCC car parks in that time? How much revenue did First Group lose that week in reduced car park income – and don’t they know that the day after they made the change was the start of a four-day weekend for most people, being the late May bank holiday and Diamond Jubilee celebrations? Would it not have been better to have spent those four days installing the new system ready for the following Wednesday?! Why the rush and – as a result – lack of notice to customers?
• NEW: Reports by “TimeWaster” on FirstCrapitalConnect.co.uk that APCOA do not offer weekly tickets as RingGo used to – weekly ticket users now have to choose between the more expensive daily tickets, or a monthly ticket. (Small correction – you can still buy a weekly pass, but this costs the same amount as buying daily tickets for the same period, i.e. there is no longer a discount for buying weekly)

So, there you have it. A modern-thinking company (RingGo) has been forced to apologise to silent FCC’s customers for the train company’s actions (possibly in breach of its contract) to replace them with a lesser offering which possibly costs more. To one of FCC’s customers like myself, just another day.

UPDATE – 2nd July 2012
More than a month in, you would think things have had time to settle down? Think again. The “convenience charge” that both RingGo and APCOA added on to the cost of the parking (presumably this is their fee and profit for providing a telephone line) was supposed to reduce to 20p as a result of the change – FCC even boasted about it in the little publicity they did (putting flyers on windscreens of parked cars). However it still seems to be 40p, i.e. when parking at Flitwick station on a Monday afternoon you could pay £3.00 at the ticket machine, or £3.40 if you use the telephone service. I bought this up with @FirstCC on Twitter, who said it could be a “glitch”. They are hopefully due to call me some time this week for more information.

I hate the Halifax ads with a passion. The terrible songs, the bad acting, the fake smiling, but most of all the unrealisticness from a real radio station.

Also, in the second photo, there seems to be another two or three studios behind them. And in another version of this ad, there are about 20 people in the studio. Nowadays you’d struggle to find two people working in the same studio!

I received an email from Adam Melling, a student at Merseyside’s King George V college, who’s working on an assignment about freelancers. I agreed to take part in the survey on the condition I could also post my answers here.

Have you always worked as a freelancer?

No. When I was at University, I was working part-time at my local BBC radio station. In my final academic year, I pushed hard for them to give me a contract as that was the only way I could apply for other BBC jobs. After graduation, I was successful in applying for a job in BBC News’ News Traffic Unit on an initial “fixed-term” contact for three months.

This contract was extended in chunks of various lengths (the longest being an extra 4 months, the shortest being just two weeks) over a period of 15 months, and then I applied for a job as a Studio Manager at the World Service and got it. The contract was another fixed-term for 6 months.

Towards the end of that contract, I was informed that it was not going to be renewed. Despite applying for a number of jobs while I still could (before my contract ran out), I was unsuccessful and was forced to go freelance. Strangely, this actually opened up new opportunities for me and I was offered a number of days work at Arabic TV. This was my first job outside of radio and I was initially nervous about changing media, but now I love it.

What I don’t love, however, is being a freelancer. I am getting married later this year, and then the task of saving for a mortgage begins in earnest. To achieve this, I am aggressively looking for a full-time job in the media which will give me stability, even if that means taking a pay cut. I have given up looking at the BBC; with the ongoing and seemingly endless cuts which will permanently damage the entire organisation, as well as the frankly ridiculous rules regarding who is able to apply for jobs (which mean that even if a job comes up for the departments I freelance for, I am banned from applying for it) I am looking at the commercial sector including shopping TV and Al-Jazeera.

What are the main advantages and disadvantages of being freelance?

The main disadvantage is that already discussed: There is no stability. The need to “have fingers in lots of pies” is immense: any client you work for could turn around one day, without warning or reason, and tell you that there is no more work for you (or they might not even tell you!). In this situation, freelancers get no redundancy pay, no P45 (which can cause issues for claiming unemployment benefit), and the loss of a potentially lucrative client.

Company benefits are also a problem: only if you actually complete the work are you paid. This means that when you want to take a holiday, you lose out on pay (compared to working on a contract, when you are still paid for a certain amount of time per year even if you’re not in work). Being ill is a big no-no, too: no work, no pay. Maternity/Paternity – forget it. You’re excluded from company pension schemes and don’t get the benefits (free healthcare, company car, money-off at local retailers, etc) your colleagues do. The BBC pay for a taxi for staff for up to 30 miles if their shift starts or finishes overnight – but as a freelancer I have to make my own way in even between these hours. Fortunately I live on a 24/7 train line; others might not be so lucky.

On the flip side, the advantages to freelancing are immense: the biggest one being able to flexibly choose when you work. When I first went freelance, I didn’t do a nightshift for around 9 months, compared to previously when I was working a nightshift 5-8 nights a month as part of my rota pattern. If I need a day off to go for a family meal, a weekend off to go on a city break, or three months off to travel around Australia (I’m working on it…), I’ll never have an issue with my leave request being refused.

With power comes responsibility though – it’s all well me choosing when I don’t work – but there’s always that nagging doubt in the back of my mind that if I refuse work – whether that’s because I’ve just worked 8 days in a row and start another 4 nightshifts the day after, or because I’m working elsewhere, or simply because I just don’t want to – they won’t bother offering me work in the future.

What resources do you require to do your job?

As well as sound engineering for the BBC, I’m also a web designer. Obviously to do that, I need my laptop and various software such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver and a collection of different web browsers to test my code.

I’m fortunate in that sound engineering is something that has to be done in a specific place (a studio), so there’s no requirement to “take work home with me” such as paperwork or reports which have to be completed.

My sub-£100 mobile phone (I refuse to purchase an iPhone which will just break in 12 months anyway) is also requirement; clients can contact me any time, anywhere to offer me work. I can also pick up and respond to my emails on the move so my response rate to clients, both new and existing, is quick which gives me extra points in my favour.

How do you market yourself?

Fairly badly, actually. With a view to generating as much cash as I can and becoming less reliant on the BBC to provide my payslips, I am working on it – starting with a newly-refreshed website and logo, and have dabbled in (but not yet mastered) Google AdWords to promote it.

I’ve never had any business cards, but word of mouth publicity about me is – so I’ve been told – very high. The reason I got those first few days in Arabic TV which led to much more TV work was because someone recommended me. Reputation is all-important in the freelance world: a bad reputation will get you no bookings, and no cash to buy food with.

What kind of salary are you on?

It depends. My BBC work ranges from £13.09 to £19.86 an hour (don’t ask me where those random pennies come from), depending on which department I’m working for. Unfortunately I have no control over what I get paid; the amounts are set by the BBC, and that’s that! I have been trying for a long time to get them to employ the services of my company, rather than me as an individual, which would mean I can set what I pay (and therefore charge extra for working on Christmas Day, or a very short notice), as well as be entitled to tax breaks on my transport and lunch: so far, they’re not budging.

What taxes do you have to pay?

Having said that, because the BBC employ me and not my company, it does mean I don’t have to worry about filling in a self-assessment tax return as they pay all my income tax, national insurance and student loan payments from my PAYE payslip. This certainly reduces my workload, stress level and negates the need for me to pay an accountant.

Apologies for the year-long outage of service.

Blogger removed FTP publishing, and I wasn’t prepared to pay for a separate domain or host it on their sub-domain. So it stagnated, until I found the wonders of WordPress.

All of the previous blog articles are here, and the new RSS feed is here.

Enjoy.