X
Home & Office

Fuming on the platform? Railway complaints accepted here.

Due to launch on December 1, the GNER complaints site is a pressure group with a difference.
Written by ZDNet UK, Contributor

The Getting Nowhere Early or Reliably site has been set up as the unofficial rail users forum for irate passengers. Currently accepting complaints for online publication at the site's opening, the Yorkshire-based Internet consultants who founded the site are "not affiliated to or supported by any rail network."

"We've only had about 50 complaints so far," said co-founder Jason Finch, "but then people only found out about the site yesterday."

A favourite of Finch's is of the man who was "so tempted by a company's marketing of family days out on the trains that he tried it with his family." The brochure showed a family on bikes so he took his wife and children out on their bikes, went to take a train to the countryside and "was told they couldn't go on as the maximum number of bikes on any one train was five and they were already at the limit for that journey."

The site also points out that it is not intended to target any particular railway, despite taking the initials of the Greater North Eastern Railways that serves Yorkshire. "We are confident there will be no problems in terms of the domain name," said Finch. "We are not passing ourselves off as a rail company and the site is not directed towards any particular network. Our initial advice is that because the letters represent an acronym in both cases, it would be difficult to argue the case for releasing the domain."

A spokesperson from Greater North Eastern Railways told The Guardian, "There's nothing new in rail users forming groups. This is just a use of modern technology for an old idea."

Editorial standards