Readers' Letters
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I was let down three times by Blue Star
I HAD three bad experiences on the No 1 Blue Star service from Southampton to Winchester recently. I sent an e-mail to the address they give on their posters aand I have not had a reply.
On April 4 I went to catch the 10.50am bus in Above Bar. It did not arrive and neither did the 11.10am. When a No 1 did arrive there were at least a dozen disgruntled passengers waiting to get on a single decker.
On April 22 I went out to catch the 8.18am bus from Bassett Avenue to Chilworth. Again it did not arrive and I bought a £3.60 return from the next one that did.
That evening I went to catch the 5.24pm service from Chilworth to Bassett. Again it did not arrive.
This service is not good enough, especially when they ask for comments and when you send e-mails they don't reply.
MRS LORNA FURNELL, Bassett, Southampton.
Alex Hornby, operations manager of Blue Star, replies:
"I obviously share Mrs Furnell's concerns and am grateful for the opportunity to respond to her points.
"Firstly, we do not have any record of Mrs Furnell's complaints to us and will obviously investigate any potential communication issues at our end as to why her e-mail was not received by us. We do pride ourselves on dealing with complaints as quickly as possible; that way, any other members of or team implicated by such comments can be contacted and appraised as swiftly as possible. We also accept that certain issues require sufficient investigation to do them justice, and so an acknowledgement should at least be offered so the customer is reassured we are doing all we can to deal and learn from such feedback.
"Nevertheless, Mrs Furnell has raised some legitimate issues that she should not have to anticipate when attempting to use our service.
"On Friday 4 April, the vehicle involved in operating the journey at 1050hrs from Southampton unfortunately broke down in the city centre. We would normally substitute the vehicle straight away, but this problem was identified just as the bus was starting its journey, and so as time progressed the following journey was ready to depart. Unfortunately, owing to the volume of passengers using this service (as the previous journey failed), meant that this did run a few minutes late. Obviously, I apologise for the inconvenience caused and I completely concur that this was unacceptable towards our customers on that particular day. Whilst the condition our fleet progressively improves, and we anticipate seven brand new vehicles for Bluestar 1 in the coming year, vehicle breakdowns can happen without warning. It is our responsibility to simply do all we can to mitigate the effect on our customers, and we could have tried harder on this occasion.
"During the morning journey on Tuesday 22 April, our data that we gain from the information on the ticket machine did indicate that this journey ran as normal. However, I have identified the driver concerned and will be pleased to investigate this issue further to see if they can shed any light on Mrs Furnell's comments.
The 1650 departure from Winchester that evening, which Mrs Furnell attempted to use at Chilworth departed Winchester on time but did arrive 9 minutes late at Chilworth Roundabout. We have already extended journey times on this particular service, and have identified obvious - although unpredictable - issues of congestion at Winchester city centre and along Bournemouth Road at Chandler's Ford. I am pleased to be able to take this issue away and deal with further.
We understand that owing to the continuing increasing and unpredictable effect of traffic congestion on our services that several peak time journeys on Bluestar 1 and Bluestar 3 in particular are suffering from delays. However, we are monitoring the impact on our services diligently, and you will note Garry Jones, our Service Quality Inspector, travelling on a range of our rush hour services to measure journey times, whilst gaining feedback from our customers, so we can build more robust and reliable timetables. Unfortunately, we have to share our track' as such with other traffic and have to alter our journey times accordingly to cope with this. I would relish the opportunity of more bus priorities to speed our services further, but until then, we have to share our roadway with other vehicles that can impact the timetable we wish to deliver.
I am very sorry that we may have failed Mrs Furnell on this occasion but am grateful that I have some productive comments to help us improve and I hope that our customers can feel confident in contacting us so we can improve services further.
10:00am Saturday 10th May 2008
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