I’m genuinely amazed they took over from Virgin. Prices soared and we got worse service. And the trains still smell of toilets.
Clearly Avanti’s management is shit if drivers haft to work rest days.
Rebrand this one to the London Midland and Scotish railway when it’s back under national hands.
The service has absolutely gone to shit since they took it over. I use the WCML semi frequently to visit family but not regularly, and increasingly am switching to driving because it just isn’t a viable option.
Of the last 8 trains I’ve got (ie 4 return journeys), have had 5 full refunds for trains that have either been cancelled completely or in 3 cases terminated early, leaving a road journey at the other end of between 1 and 3 hours and some horrendously stressful journeys. Of the remaining 3, 2 have been delayed by 30 minutes and 1 was on time. If you are traveling on it for a weekend it is essentially not a reliable option now as you are odds on to lose a significant proportion of your time to delays.
Don’t want to go into too much detail, but my work includes contact with Avanti and I can vouch the number of resignations I’ve seen on their side in the last 4 months has been extraordinary – real shit show!
After some cursory googling, I see Avanti West Coast are 70% owned by FirstGroup which explains *a lot* of how they’ve screwed the pooch
5 comments
I’m genuinely amazed they took over from Virgin. Prices soared and we got worse service. And the trains still smell of toilets.
Clearly Avanti’s management is shit if drivers haft to work rest days.
Rebrand this one to the London Midland and Scotish railway when it’s back under national hands.
The service has absolutely gone to shit since they took it over. I use the WCML semi frequently to visit family but not regularly, and increasingly am switching to driving because it just isn’t a viable option.
Of the last 8 trains I’ve got (ie 4 return journeys), have had 5 full refunds for trains that have either been cancelled completely or in 3 cases terminated early, leaving a road journey at the other end of between 1 and 3 hours and some horrendously stressful journeys. Of the remaining 3, 2 have been delayed by 30 minutes and 1 was on time. If you are traveling on it for a weekend it is essentially not a reliable option now as you are odds on to lose a significant proportion of your time to delays.
Don’t want to go into too much detail, but my work includes contact with Avanti and I can vouch the number of resignations I’ve seen on their side in the last 4 months has been extraordinary – real shit show!
After some cursory googling, I see Avanti West Coast are 70% owned by FirstGroup which explains *a lot* of how they’ve screwed the pooch