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December, 2010

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December 25, 2010 12:09 am

An open letter to National Express East Anglia

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by Martin A. Brooks    in rant

Hello NXEA,

For the past five working days I have had to deal with your professional handling of what no-one on the planet could have predicted: a bit of snow in winter.  Because of 48 hours, now a week ago, where we had some snow come down, I have now had to deal with 5 straight working days of late running and cancelled trains.  On none of those days was there any significant snowfall.  “Adverse weather conditions” has been your slogan and excuse for pisspoor service leaving us, the pre-paying public, stranded and frustrated at your inability to guess that sometimes there is wintery weather during winter.

Oh but that’s not all. You sprung into action with your special timetable.  In this case “special” meaning that you run fewer services, working on the basis that fewer trains can be run more reliably.   Not one single one of your “special” trains that I was interested in ran on time.  Not one single one.  Indeed several didn’t run at all as they were affected by the “adverse weather conditions” mentioned above.

And then you feckless maniacs decide to add even more Christmas cheer.  You decided at fuck all notice that the last train for my route (Liverpool Steet to Shenfield) shall be at 20.00 on the 24th. Excuse me? What? That’s something like 30 train journeys you’ve decided not to run: Just Like That.  And that’s just on my route. What about workers who finish after 8pm?

Will you be issuing refunds for people affected by this unilateral withdrawal of service?   Of course you won’t.

Just to add to the fun, you guys are going to be upping the cost of my ticket in January.  I will be paying more money for a service that is barely adequate at the best of times, barely acceptable most of the time and non-existent all too often.

National Express East Anglia, you are incompetent fuckwits.  You have no business being in charge of national infrastructure.  There appears not to be one mild excess of weather you are capable of dealing with.  Too much rain in spring, too much heat in summer, pesky leaves in autumn and cold days in winter.  I have simply no idea how you plan to cope with the predicted number of people wanting to travel to Stratford for the 2012 Olympics.  Fortunately, I plan to be elsewhere during that period.

Did I mention that you’re incompetent fuckwits?

Regards

Martin.

 

5 comments!
December 14, 2010 10:19 pm

Paying your bills on time

no comments
by Martin A. Brooks    in rant

As someone who runs a small business, I completely understand the problems of cash flow.  You provide goods or a service to another company and then give them “30 days” or whatever to pay the invoice.   If you’re lucky, your customers are like me: A bill arrives, it gets paid. Right there, right then.

Apparently this is quite rare.

I once wrote something similar to the above on That Mailing List.  One of my suppliers delicately emailed me mentioning that, in fact, I had not immediately paid a bill they had sent and could I please do so.  Acting in good faith I wired the cash less than 20 minutes later with an apology.  Later it turned out to be an accounting mistake on their part, we had already paid the bill within a day of getting it, as I had thought.  It then took them nearly two months to refund the overpayment.

It’s obvious why you might allow an invoice payment to be deferred for up to X days.  And it’s obvious why, once that period has passed, you write very polite letters asking for payment that overlooked invoice, at their convenience, if they don’t mind.  You’ve already provided goods or a service and you haven’t been paid yet and you don’t want to piss off the people who owe you lest they delay or make your bills not make this month’s payment run.

Can we small businesses please get into the habit of paying bills on receipt, or at least on time?

I write this, of course, with a pile of literally thousands of pounds of unpaid invoices (ours, to other people) on one side, and another pile on the other side (other people’s, to us) with a PAID stamp on.

 

 

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