Taking the train is just a strain

Having been a victim of the railways for the last 15 years (apart from a joyous two-year period of a daily 190 mile round trip by car every day to Milton Keynes – easier than my current daily 13-mile train journey into London) I was astonished to read in your letters page (MW February 1) a statement from a railway marketing person that his marketing colleagues were “doing a good job before Hatfield”. Apart from the attempt to annoy passengers by referring to them as “customers” – obviously the railways would rather anger customers than passengers – who can forget the GNER ads featuring people stuck in cars, and suggesting that they should have used trains instead? The pinnacle of this campaign was the couple driving through the snow in their car. Have railway marketing people never travelled by train when it’s snowing? Or, to be more accurate, have they ever sat in an abandoned train station with no heating, lighting or information when the first flake drops? Obviously not. Passengers have, though – and they know where they’d rather be.

The other ad I recall was equally bad: a couple shouting at each other because they were lost. I have never felt helpless in my car, but every single time I get on a train I am taking a gamble as to where and when I might arrive. All railway passengers know this.

It’s bad enough the rest of the railways employees not having the first idea of what their “customers” are put through, but marketing people? Surely their job is to entice passengers, not wind them up – that’s what their colleagues are there for.

David Pincott

Managing Director

Pirate Communications