Govia Thameslink Rail and the complaint about the chiropodist’s bill

Cattle never had it this bad… travelling by Govia Thameslink

The appalling Thameslink rail franchise run by Govia (who also currently have the equally appallingly-mismanaged Southern and Northern English franchises) is notorious for cancelling trains at the last moment.

Its recent catastrophic timetable change caused such chaos that they had to bring in a new changed timetable to the changed timetable and then another timetable with changes to the changes to the timetable and the current ‘ interim’ timetable under which they have reportedly withdrawn 200 scheduled trains per day.  

Thameslink is also notorious for not stopping at the scheduled and announced stations and for changing platforms (especially at West Hampstead) roughly 20, sometimes 10, seconds before the train arrives without any warning nor announcement with the result that passengers have to race over the footbridge and sometimes miss the train.

 

At St Albans station, apparently, they DO sometimes inform passengers. Someone who works for Thameslink Customer Services tells me of this complaint by a passenger (possibly but not certainly at St Albans):

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A lady wrote in, enclosing an invoice from a chiropodist. She said:

“I arrived last Tuesday at the station to take a train to London. The signage said it would come in on Platform 4. So up I went over the bridge down onto the platform. Two minutes later, the announcer said: “Sorry, but the train to London will now arrive on Platform 1.”

“I ran up the stairs, over the bridge, down onto Platform 1.

“Two minutes later and, yes, the train was now going to arrive back on Platform 4.

“Up over and back down again.

“Therefore please find enclosed a bill from my chiropodist and, as evidence, a zip lock bag containing the hard skin from the bottom of my feet.”

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Thameslink did not reimburse her.