JFC Travel Blog

In my last post I said that I’d list some of the ways that NXEC has lowered the standards of service lately.

The main changes have affected passengers who liked to take advantage of the on-board catering particularly those who liked to make use of the restaurant.

In January National Express laid off large numbers of their staff which has meant a poor on-board service on busy trains. Until January 2009 over 80 trains a day used to offer a restaurant service to both standard and first class ticket holders, this number has now been reduced to 15.

On selected other services you now have an at seat menu for those in first class while those in standard will have to make do with what’s in the buffet. The first class at seat menu offers freshly prepared hot food but not to the same standard as the restaurant. There’s been complaints that serving meals throughout the train rather than the restaurant is making some services smell like a transport cafe.

The restaurant is not the only thing missing on-board, staff cuts also make the probability of the standard class trolley operating much smaller meaning longer queues at the buffet car.

Staff cuts are also planned at the ticket offices with many offices having reduced hours.

It is planned to install ticket gates in most stations in order to lay off some of the on-board ticket inspectors.

The first class lounges are going to be converted to self-service (the ones that aren’t already), this is in order to further cut costs.

So, if you don’t travel first class or use the restaurant you may think these changes don’t affect you. These changes are just the ones that are publically visible, it wouldn’t be surprising if maintenence budgets were cut meaning less reliable trains and I’ve already heard many complaints about the reliability of the toilets recently.

Also remember the prices of fully flexible tickets. A business traveller buying a flexible first class return from London to Edinburgh will be paying a massive £373, these travellers contribute a large portion to the operation of the service, if these customers decide to switch to flying then that’s a lot of lost revenue and yet more cutbacks.

Since the start of the year National Express East Coast (NXEC) have made some major cutbacks in their on-board service offering while continuing to raise fares. These cutbacks have resulted in a large number of job cutbacks while reducing the high quality of service that was associated with GNER.

If you’re a regular NXEC traveller and disappointed with the new service levels then please sign the petition. The government is responsible for agreeing the standards required for the rail franchises and the current decline in service with NXEC is very frustrating for regular travellers.

For those who’ve not travelled NXEC recently I’ll be creating a post soon listing some of the ways that service has declined since January 2009.

Although I’ve not been generally happy with the way that NXEC has been ‘enhancing’ services since they replaced GNER I still generally have decent experiences on-board. Ultimately, they were all GNER staff at one time!

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One service that I’ve started to use recently is National Express dot2dot. The service is effectively a shared minibus taxi service from Heathrow Airport to Central London. The price is significantly cheaper than a taxi and compares favourably with the Heathrow Express. As this service picks you up at your door and drops you off at the terminal you don’t have the hassle of getting to the station and then fighting with the crowds. How does this compare with other means of getting to the airport?

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I had hoped that National Express East Coast (NXEC) would provide a loyalty scheme that’d encourage people off the planes and onto the trains. The new scheme was recently announced and is called ‘escape’ and launches on the 1st December. I used to find the GNERtime scheme excellent but this new scheme is really hardly any incentive at all. Here’s how they compare… (more…)

So far most of my comments about NXEC have not been positive. However, recently things have been looking up. The most important development is the introduction of a loyalty scheme to replace GNERtime. The qualification total is higher, £1800 over 3 months as opposed to £1200 with GNERtime and the exact benefits have not yet been finalised but the website does state the following:

By becoming a member you will be able to enjoy some excellent benefits, including complimentary First Class travel, offers on food and drink, access to our First Class Lounges, and more.

So we can expect benefits similar to what GNERtime had offered. Whether they’ll be as generous we’ve yet to see until the full details are announced.

It is good to see NXEC taking the first steps to reward their frequent travellers. If the scheme compares favourably with GNERtime I will certainly use NXEC more frequently.

UPDATE: It’s not so positive after all.

In May I mentioned my frustrations with NXEC and the decline in service quality over the months since they replaced GNER. Now the NXEC commuter blog has admitted something that I knew they would eventually, that things were much better under GNER. Let’s just face fact, commuting to London by any means sucks, the transport infrastructure is not designed to comfortably cope with the current peak time demand, but GNER did try better than most to offer a decent service. The GNER commuters from Peterborough would almost certainly had it worse if they lived elsewhere and had to commute with a different train company. I had a nightmare few years when I had to commute from Surrey on South West Trains. (more…)

Last night thousands of people took part in a party to commemorate the last day that alcohol was allowed on the tube. I didn’t attend the party but as I was working late yesterday I decided to grab a few cans before jumping on the Hammersmith and City line home, then I got a bit more curious and made a bit of a diversion. (more…)

I have to say that overall I’m not too happy with the first few months of the National Express East Coast franchise. In fact, the only good thing I can say about them is that gner.co.uk redirects to their website so I don’t have to type the ridiculously long nationalexpresseastcoast.com if I’m on a computer where it’s not bookmarked. I suspect the people at the NXEC commuter blog are wishing for a return of GNER, their blog was originally set up to criticise GNER and they were happy that they lost their franchise. Perhaps now they can admit that GNER wasn’t all that bad really So far I’ve noticed the following on my travels with NXEC… (more…)

I’ve written a lot about NXEC recently but I’ve not yet came to a verdict on whether they’ll live up to GNER’s standards. Today marks the launch of National Express East Anglia which is just a rebranding of the franchise formerly known as ‘one‘. In this case it’s no change of ownership, just a simple rebranding. As a name anything is an improvement over ‘one’ but I don’t know why they didn’t just use their official name London Eastern Railway.

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