Northern Fail complaint Letter

My Complaint Letter said

Dear Ian Bevan

I have been a customer of yours now every day since the 4th of January and I have noticed a trend. Your trains are never on time, by never a mean nearly always, of course I exaggerate a bit but i catch the 17:36 train from Sheffield to Huddersfield almost every day. I only travel the five minute (its what your timetable says it should take) journey to Meadowhall. Admittedly i did not keep track straight away but by the beginning of February it seemed that this train never left on time.

I decided to keep track, no pun intended, of how often this train has left on time on the days i have caught it. Like i have already said i don't catch it every single day, sometimes, maybe once a fortnight the 17:25 train is more than five minutes late leaving and i manage to get that one. So anyway to my point Since the first of February when i set my watch to exactly the time on the station clock (yes i know this seems a bit sad but i had time as i was waiting for one of your delayed trains). The 17:36 train has actually left Sheffield on time on only five occasions, Five occasions in over six months.

This I am sure you will agree is appalling service and i pay a not inconsiderate amount every month for the privilege of travelling five minutes (hah) every day from and to Sheffield from Meadowhall.

On one day last week the train left 4 minutes late and managed to arrive at Meadowhall 21 minutes late which is a staggering piece of incompetance to lose 17 minutes on a five minute journey.

Frequently and by frequently the trains are quite dirty and could do with a deep clean. Its not just at night either the 07:47 train into work this morning was delayed until 07:50 according to the station boards and finally showed up at 07:54. The conductor looked like he had been to a Miami Vice convention or was on his way to an 80s boy band audition complete with crumpled suit and shirt which was open , thick gold chain, three day stubble and bleached spiked surfer type hair. In his defence he did actually bother to check my ticket which is something the evening conductors rarely do. Perhaps if you actually checked tickets and charged people to use the trains properly you would be able to afford some new rolling stock. The train on the 6th of June, and i remember the date as i made a comment on twitter about it, the 6th of June being D-Day actually felt like it had been made in 1944 and last cleaned in about 1945.

I don't expect much in return for this email but i thought it would be worth sending anyway and to tell you i pray for the day someone else takes over this franchise as they cannot possible be worse than Northern Rail. I am not the only disgruntled passenger, not even the only one on twitter, I suggest you have a look at http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23northernfail. I look forward to your response.

Regards