Irish Times Letter Today

[Oisin88]

Madam, I commute each working day from Drogheda to Dublin. I use the 8:20am express, which is an Enterprise train from Belfast. The train rarely arrives at 8:20 and even rarer are the days when I actually get to sit in the seat I paid for. How is this acceptable?

I managed to decipher my way through the Irish Rail website to find a complaints contact. I think Irish Rail calls it Customer Service. Perhaps it should be called Customer Disservice. The website informed me that my "query" would be directed to the relevant person and I could expect an initial response within three days. Two months later I have not received any response at all.

Recently I decided to book a seat for a journey I plan to take to Limerick. I negotiated my way through the Irish Rail website booking facility. At the very end of booking my ticket I found out that I had booked only a single. No problem, I thought. I will call the number detailed in the confirmation email for changing bookings.

However, I was informed on calling this number that I could not amend the booking to a return ticket. On my request to cancel the original booking and book a new return ticket I was told I would have to pay a 20 percent cancellation fee.

I enquired what this 20 per cent fee was to cover. The Irish Rail representative said she had no idea why this fee was levied.

The above are only two examples of the never ending misery of having to use Irish Rail. Trains are often cancelled or late without any announcements to inform passengers. All of the trains at peak times are overflowing. This is the same on most commuter routes, I understand. While animals travelling by road are guaranteed by law a certain amount of space and rest on journeys the same cannot be said of the miserable commuter who pays for his journey but rarely gets a seat on the overcrowded trains which his taxes have helped to buy.

Can someone in Irish Rail actually reply to complaints or even this letter? - Yours, etc,

Interesting animal anology