Scot Fail

I usually purchase my train tickets from the Scot Rail app. It has proved to be efficient and useful, and occasionally tickets for English trains have been cheaper on there than on the actual operator’s site. The company decided to replace its app last month, and the result was a disaster. Tickets would not work, and my own literally disappeared from the phone. I urgently contacted them: “Yes, yes, we are having a few technical difficulties but they are being resolved tonight. Your tickets will reappear", cooed a nice Scotswoman.

"What if they don’t?"

"Oh, we have contacted all station staff and made them aware, so you’ll be fine."

Unfortunately, Scot Rail’s memo had not reached the station staff of Wales, and neither had my £58-ticket reached my phone. I was therefore in the unenviable position of having to convince station staff guarding their barriers and train staff guarding their company revenues that I was not just another fare-dodging thief. I reflected on the irony of having been a magistrate who fined fare evaders as I nervously awaited the guard making her way doing the train and rehearsing my implausible-sounding story. My grey hair and boring-looking travel reading might have given me the benefit of the doubt, for I somehow managed to pass my interrogations. Yet this made me rather angry with Scot Rail for having put me in that position. Their website accepted my money with all the speed and haste of a gaping mouth attached to a hungry belly, but the return tickets literally disappeared on the day I needed them.

I complained, receiving back a glib email from a bloke with an African name, thanking me for ‘reaching out’ and giving my valuable feedback. I phoned Scot Rail, explaining that it was a complaint I was making, and would they be good enough to look into it properly and apologise if what I said was correct? The same functionary drafted another reply, apologising, but with a number of mistakes which made the meaning unclear. A company which takes its customers seriously, Scot Rail is not. I have stopped using it and have deleted its app. I no longer trust it and hope other rail users begin to patronise other firms, too, though I feel sorry for Scotsmen who are required to use its trains. Those who run it should never have given up their paper round.

Scot Rail effectively made me a criminal in the eyes of Welsh and English railway staff. Most fare dodgers naturally claim to have bought a ticket but, sadly, are just unable to prove it when required, and will the ticket inspector kindly take their word for it? Those who cheat rail companies out of revenue invariably proceed to lie about it, too. I had told the truth and spent the money, but barely looked any better. Thank God, He is fairer and more just than human agencies; although He denies entry to heaven to all travellers who attempt to make it under their own steam, He gladly admits all who come to Him by the Lord Jesus, and all free of charge. 

They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God. Psalm 84:7

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