Re: Country(link?) - try walking instead

[Rod Gayford <rjaygee@smartchat.net.au>]

I have no doubt members of the public can be downright obnoxious.  However, the
train staff are surly because all they deal with is whinging pensioners and
assorted drunks and druggies. When the occasional full fare paying passenger
tries the service they just get pissed off by the way they are treated.  At the
moment its a losing battle with good money being wasted on first class
facilities that are not utilised to maximise revenue. So hence my suggestion to
go for the low end market option. For $25 who is going to complain. The part of
the low cost option is no booked seats, first come first served.

Cheers

Rod Gayford

Dave Proctor wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> David Johnson <trainman@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
> 381F3705.4818CC64@ozemail.com.au">news:381F3705.4818CC64@ozemail.com.au...
>
> > One day, the knockers in this group will see just how horrible some
> customers
> > can be to the staff, and then understand their attitudes. I could give
> > multitudes of examples, but very few of you would believe just how bad
> some
> > people can be.
>
> Most of the people in this newsgroup know this, and accept it.
>
> But the point that has been made, repeatedly, is that members of the general
> public really don't care about that - all they perceive is obnoxious and
> arrogant staff, and it turns them off the whole travelling experience.
>
> I managed to convince a group of tennis umpires to use the XPT sleepers to
> travel from SYD to MEL for the 1999 Australian Open - these people did not
> drink, stayed pretty much in the sleeping compartments, were in no way rude
> to the staff. Yet they all complained that the OB staff were obnoxious. (I
> did not notice it, perhaps I have gotten used to it.)
>
> These are people who paid adult first class fares (the tournament was
> reimbursing us, so we did not care how much we spent). These are the sort of
> passengers that Countrylink can not afford to lose.
>
> Of those 10 tennis umpires, 8 of them have decided to fly down this year -
> there on board experience was a factor in their decision not to go by train
> this time around. So Countrylink misses out on $288 from 8 people (at D40
> rates), a total of $2304.
>
> --
> DaveProctor
> thadocta AT dingoblue.net.au