Ever have one of those days where nothing seems to go right? Well, when it comes to Arriva and the 55 bus route they provide in Letchworth Garden City, that day is every day. Whether they’re treating their customers like the scum that feeds upon the scum of the earth, attempting to hit and run them, driving recklessly, ignoring timetables, or generally being dicks, they never cease to undermine their company slogan “Raising the bar in customer service”.

Tonight, the god-awful ’service’ came to a head, and I finally sat down and wrote a complaint. I’m turning it into an open letter here.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I write this evening to make a complaint in regards to the driver of the 19:09 55 bus to grange estate. I have, in the past, managed to overcome the urge to complain, however, tonight was the straw that broke the camels back.

Your slogan is “raising the bar in customer service”, however, regularly and without fail, your buses fail to maintain their scheduled timetable, usually arriving and leaving their scheduled stops up to 10 minutes early. This is especially bad at the letchworth station bus stop, where I have come out of the station at 1900 to see the 55 going by. At this point, my only options are to attempt to beat the bus to the bottom of the road as it completes its loop, walk home, or take a taxi.

This evening was one of these occasions. At 19:04, as I crossed the road to the bus stop, the 55 arrived, ejected some passengers and waited for a few seconds - I can only imagine to allow the driver to massage his timetable so that it isn’t obvious to whoever manages the drivers that he’d completed early -, at this point, I believed - naïvely as per usual - that he would wait at the stop until 19:09 and then proceed.

What actually occurred, was him closing the doors as I was within 25 meters of the stop - walking very close to the edge of the pavement so as to make him aware of my presence -, and then beginning to pull away. At this point, my blood began to boil, as this is a regular occurance, and I stepped into the road to block his way and flag him down. At this point, your driver motioned me out of the way and accelerated towards me while mouthing the words ‘fuck off’. Fearing for my own safety at this point, I jumped out of the way of your bus and took a taxi home at the cost of £5.

I’m not really asking for compensation at this point, although, that would be nice. In fact, I’m moving back to London in part because of the awful bus service you provide - no buses on sundays, no buses after 7pm -, which makes it impossible to do anything after work without walking for miles, or paying for taxis.

What I am asking for is this:

1) Reprimand the driver of tonight’s 55 bus. At the very least, suspend him, and re-educate him on the fact that he is only there because buses can’t yet drive themselves. He is not God, and he doesn’t have the right to risk customer lives. I’d honestly rather see the guy get his ass canned or moved to a different service that I don’t have to endure.

2) Fix the clocks on your buses - there’s obviously something out of whack there, when the rest of the world believes it’s 19:05 (or 19:00…) and your bus drivers believe it’s 19:09.

3) Implement a policy whereby the buses may only run to their timetable or run late at every stop. No making up time, no departing stops 5-10 minutes early just because no-one happened to be there at the time. Driving a bus isn’t rocket science.

4) Hire someone to do an audit of tachograph cards to match mileage vs time to see exactly how awful your ’service’ is.

5) Hire some bus drivers who understand the concept of a smile and customer service. Sure, it’s a shit job, but, they applied for it, so they ought to be able to apply a feign happiness and a smile when dealing with passengers.

That is all.

Kindest Regards

Also, should you ever need to make a complaint, first write it in a text editor, then browse to http://www.arrivabus.co.uk/contact-arriva/ - the page has an insanely low session timeout. In the 10 minutes it took me to write this, my session had been killed. Now I get to fill in their ridiculous form again. Ever heard of an email address Arriva?

I’ll be making another post should I ever get a response from them… their contact page responded only with this:

Thank you for contacting Arriva. We appreciate your feedback. If you have asked us a question we will try to respond within one working day. If you have made a comment that we need to investigate further, we will do our best to get back to you within ten working days.

After reading http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/29/carter_net_neut/ and http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/30/isp_carter_music_policing/, I got a sudden urge to write to the idiot that is promoting this stuff:

Lord Carter of Barnes
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW

Re: Your quaint ideas about the internet

Dear Lord Carter of Barnes,

On behalf of everyone who actually understands The Internet (it’s not actually a series of tubes), those who oppose dictatorship in its many forms, and the fair people who don’t have their head stuck so far up the outmoded, antediluvian and superannuated backsides of the music industry that they can no longer see sense; I would like to respectfully say ‘Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on’.

Consider this: you are attempting to push laws through to support an industry that is flailing around in its death throes. You are also going to be solely responsible for putting the United Kingdom on a par with China in terms of Internet freedom; or lack thereof.
I realise you have no problem sleeping at night while considering pushing for these things to happen; with respect however, I believe your ability to sleep at night is merely because you are so out of touch with reality that you shouldn’t really be in charge of your own sleeping arrangements.

Milord, I put it to you that perhaps you should ask your children (or if you don’t have any, someone elses children; and at that, children who actually have used the internet) to explain to you the freedoms that the internet gives people in an already heavily oppressed society; and why enforcing ridiculous laws undermine its very nature and cast questions on the very possibility of any further technological advancement on these shores.
Do you really want the legacy you are remembered for throughout history to be as the man who wasn’t strong enough to see sense or find the truth, and let a dying business ruin the future for generations of people?

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully