APPENDIX 20
Correspondence between Ruskin Sports College
and Virgin Rail copied to the Committee
RUSKIN SPORTS COLLEGE
Dear Mrs Dunwoody
I've enclosed a letter of complaint that has
been sent to Virgin Rail. They have messed us about, ultimately
not providing us with group travel to London before 11.45 am.
It seems we can no longer provide our students
with a full day in London to do History GCSE work at the Imperial
War Museum and visit Parliament as well as other venues at the
centre of our democracy.
I thought you might be interested in our predicament.
Mr P Beesley
Head of Humanities
26 September 2005
Dear Virgin Rail
This is a letter of complaint and protest about
your inability to provide us with a group booking from Crewe to
London before 11.45 am. You were also unable to tell us this until
10 days before we were due to travel, despite several phone calls.
We have been taking Year 11 GCSE History students
to a study workshop at the Imperial War Museum for 25 years and
have never had a problem booking a train. We assumed this year
would be the same. As a consequence of your actions we have had
to curtail the day, reducing the amount of important work done
by our History students.
It is very disappointing that, at a time when
people should be encouraged to use the railways, commercial interests
should override service.
Mr P Beesley
Head of Humanities
26 September 2005
VIRGIN TRAINS
Dear Mr Beesley,
Thank you very much for your correspondence,
which we received in this office on 28 September 2005.
I understand how disappointed you were to find
there were none of our Group tickets available on the services
you required. These tickets really do represent exceptional value,
hence their popularity. While we offer them on many of our services,
they are understandably limited in availability.
The rule of thumb with these tickets is that
they will be available on our quieter trains, and this helps us
spread passengers over services. Group and Virgin Value tickets
offer a substantial saving on the cost of the normal walk on fare;
Saver Return ticket. However these tickets are not guaranteed
to be released on all services therefore set travel plans should
not be made on the proviso of gaining them.
Our revenue team closely monitor the loadings
on board all of our trains enabling them to take an informed decision
as to the expected passenger count for future services and in
turn allocate, or not, the appropriate number of Virgin Value
and Group tickets for each service.
Dennis Taplin
Customer Relations
7 October 2005
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