Last night I did some bookings for my trip to P-Con (GoH, the very wonderful Nick Harkaway). I had no trouble at all with booking the flight and hotel. They were both with Irish companies. The train ticket, on the other hand… I didn’t get that far as I had another train ticket to buy and the FGW web site crashed on me.
Why is it that UK companies* are so utterly incompetent when it comes to web sites? It has got to the stage where I dread using a web site if the company that created it is based in the UK. I can cope with the usual annoyances of only being able to use Internet Explorer and only being able to use credit cards registered in the UK, but I do at least expect the site to work. I do not expect it to give me an error message of “URL not syntactically valid” and have no means of recovery from that error.
And if that isn’t bad enough, I expect that when I report such an error I get treated seriously. I do not expect to be told that the problem was probably my fault for failing to enter my credit card billing address properly. It is entirely possible that I might have done so, but any competent web site will deal with that by producing an error message tell you what you have done wrong, and allowing you to correct the mistake. It should not produce a message understandable only by web programmers and then leave you with a blank screen.
So, First Great Western, your web site is crap, and your customer support is crap. Unfortunately you are the only option I have if I want to travel by train. I guess I will have to walk down to the station and buy my tickets there.
* Exception here for Sainsbury’s whose web site worked fine. OTOH, I am seriously considering changing banks because I’m so concerned about the RBS web site.
I don’t think it is all UK websites, not in my experience, but the bad ones are godawful and even obscure mobile phone sites are better than ANY of the rail companies. Wanna book to London for Eastercon from Newcastle? Thanks, I’ll take the car and keep my hair.
I use http://eastmidlandstrains.co.uk and have never had a problem, even using the company AmEx. I just checked and it seems one can buy any train ticket on it, not just local East Mids ones.
Marco
I just had a similar problem with Great Western, and their customer service department actually told me blatant lies, rather than attempt to help.
Makes British Gas appear competent!
For what it’s worth, I’ve had no problem with the HBOS site, on whichever browser I’ve used, for quite a long time now.
I think the train problem is the fact that the UK rail system was turned to mincemeat by the privatisation process. To see what a decent rail system website should be, go to bahn.de, which is the most multi-lingual site I know.
(In fact, for checking train times, we use bahn.de anyway. Sadly, they can’t actually sell us tickets for British trains. Swizz!)
Hmm, why does that trip take 198 hours? Oh yes, because it goes from here to Vladivostok, with changes at KX, Brussels, Koln and Moscow.
Ooo, they’re adverting London-Koln in 4.5 hours, for €49 … excuse me, don’t mind me, I may be gone for a while.
I would add to that the web sites for Trenitalia and SNCF (French Railways) both have manageable sites in English, but again only operate on the continent.
This is an exception where I think Amtrak (america’s rail system) runs a good website. It isn’t the most beautiful, but it does work. I can get my ticket mailed to me or printed out at any kiosk by scanning the barcode. If I put in the wrong address, it rejects the transaction with an error (never had that issue).
easyJet’s site has always worked OK for me, and flybe’s.
On trains, I’ve used thetrainline.com a few times, and it has worked OK. They must use the same database as First Great Western (the train time info is presented in the same format) but I don’t know if other aspects of the site, like the credit card arrangements, are the same source design; I haven’t used FGW.
I used thetrainline not long ago to order a ticket from Highbridge & Burnham to London Paddington; as I booked several days in advance for specific train times I got two singles, £17 and £11 (instead of the £56 or whatever it was for a flexi-offpeak-return) and the tickets arrived OK.
On the return trip, signalling problems near Didcot meant incoming trains and crews to Paddington were all delayed, which meant my train left London over an hour late and I was going to miss the last Taunton connection to Highbridge. The train manager chappie spotted this – I’d thought there was a later connection – and without me asking said he’d call me a paid-for taxi to Highbridge, and also told me I was entitled to compensation and gave me a form with which I got a £17 travel voucher, ie 150% of that sector (and not only did the taxi take me to Highbridge, it took me all the way home to Wedmore for nothing).
I used to use TheTrainLine.com until they started charging extra for using credit cards.
First Great Western is pretty much trainline.com underneath – certainly for the billing side of things according to my card statements – but without AFAIK trainline’s charges…
not that i use it much or anything : now booking for the first week of April for which Advance tickets were released at approx 10am this morning…
I’ve been having similar fin with South West trains – although I can’t complain *much*, as the tickets I wasn’t able to buy on Wednesday becasue the website was glitching were, strangely, cheaper when I came back & tried again on Thursday..
I tend to find research on The Train Line followed by walking down to the station and buying in person often works best when it can be done.