This is NOT the official MerseyRail website!

March 12, 2010

Virgin Trains – problems getting a refund?

Filed under: Not Merseyrail — Tags: , , — Chris @ 2:50 pm

Has anyone reading this had problems trying to get a refund for a ticket that they bought using the Virgin Trains website?

I bought a return ticket for a journey from Liverpool to London, but the meeting I was travelling to was cancelled at the last minute. I called Virgin, and was told I could cancel the original tickets for a refund, and book new ones for two days later, which I did. I then sent the unused tickets to Virgin Trains to claim the refund to my credit card.

Virgin (or their agent, I presume) have refunded the cost of one leg of the journey, but not the other. After three weeks and three calls to their call centre, I still haven’t been able to get the other half of my money back. They are now claiming that they didn’t recieve the tickets – a ludicrous assertion as they have already granted a partial refund for one of them (both tickets were sent in the same envelope).

Has anyone else had problems with a refund from Virgin Trains? Also, is their online ticketing run by ‘The Trainline.com’? I intentionally didn’t use The Trainline because of stories I’ve heard and read about their customer service since they were bought out a couple of years ago.

I’m just wondering whether this problem is an isolated case of a cock-up in the system, or whether it’s indicative of the problems I’ve read about.

I wouldn’t mind quite so much, but the ‘manager’ I eventually got to speak to this morning sounded like he really couldn’t have cared less.

Update: it’s now March 27th, and despite two further calls to Virgin Trains and assusances that I will have my refund “within 4 days”, I still haven’t had a penny. Frankly, I don’t believe them anymore.

On Monday I’m going to try and speak to someone at Virgin in the UK, and also to Trading Standards, if they’re interested.

November 6, 2009

Birdy bread-bomber’s shenanigans shut the LHC …

Filed under: Merseyrail, Not Merseyrail — Tags: , , , — Chris @ 3:31 pm
baguette-incident-525

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxypar4/2533571894/

In an incident almost as bizarre as the recent adverse weather excuses used by Merseyrail …

A bird dropping a piece of bread onto outdoor machinery has been blamed for a technical fault at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this week which saw significant overheating in sections of the mighty particle-punisher’s subterranean 27-km supercooled magnetic doughnut. (source)

Thanks to PopSci.com and El Reg for the story.

November 4, 2009

Joke of the day

Filed under: Not Merseyrail — Tags: , , — Chris @ 2:37 pm

A guy is sitting in the bar in departures at a busy airport. A beautiful woman walks in and sits down at the table next to him.

He decides that because she’s got a uniform on, she’s probably an off-duty flight attendant. So he decides to have a go at picking her up by identifying the airline she flies for, thereby impressing her greatly..

He leans across to her and says the Delta Airlines motto “We love to fly and it shows”.

The woman looks at him blankly. (more…)

October 31, 2009

London Underground Staffer looses his cool …

Filed under: Not Merseyrail — Tags: , — Chris @ 12:42 pm

This guy is obviously having a bad hair day …