To paraphrase a Cliff Richard song.
One of the joys of travelling around parts of England with a rucksack and tent is the necessity to get paper print outs of your flight and rail and coach tickets because you can't rely on your mobile phone to be charged or what if you lose it? So I write my phone numbers down in a notebook and get my flight tickets and rail and coach tickets printed out.
Simple enough you think? Not in Canterbury it isn't. They shut the National Express coach booking office a few years ago but the Post Office decided to take up the opportunity and sold you ticket print outs.
So we walked around to the Post Office on the top floor and queued up for at last ten minutes if not more with our packed rucksacks and tents.
I asked a lady if I could book coach tickets to Oxford? She laughed and said: " We don't sell National Express coach tickets anymore. You will have to book online".
I wasn't laughing. Thankfully I got J in IRELAND To eventually book them online and National Express emailed me my tickets.
Like I said a few paragraphs ago I couldn't rely on my mobile phone and I set about trying to find somewhere to print my tickets. I couldn't find anywhere. Like my dear old mum used to say:
"What do you do when your shoes let water in?" Or: " It's like Christmas Day in the Workhouse ". 😊
An East European lady at a homeless centre told me that the library would print them out for us. She could only help homeless people and couldn't help us. I have been there but that's a blog for another day or perhaps not?
We had to go and watch the great Prog bands on Friday afternoon so we left it to the next day on a bus trip to Faversham. Bob Geldof apparently lives there. I wonder if I could get us out of this: " Rat Trap?"🐴🎸
I met a lovely lady librarian who I explained my camping situation and she said she had been on a 16 mile hike recently with her kids and husband and only her husband moaned.😊
She told me of a phone charger machine in the Blue Water Shopping Centre that charges your phone in five minutes for a Pound. Where are these charger machines?
She printed out my tickets and only charged me 15p. To use a Curved Air lyric: ""What a lovely lady"!
Any way we got our ticket print outs. The National Express driver to Victoria Station was very helpful and so were the bus workers who directed us to our bus stop to Oxford on Buckingham Palace Road and to our Oxford bus.
When we got to Oxford Bus Station we walked into the ticket office and they booked us our tickets to Birmingham for my friend and me for Luton Airport. Paper printed tickets no problem.
When I got back to Ireland. National Express asked me to fill in a survey online and I questioned why I couldn't buy paper tickets and to think especially about older people and people who did not or could not use mobile phones or computers. They also said they do NOT do personal replys! Why ask me the questions then?
Like I say the drivers and National Express staff were great but I couldn't believe that I could not book a seat on a coach and get a paper ticket.
Is there an Ombudsman for public transport with regulations that ensure coach operators have offices in the towns they serve?
Hissy rant over.
Here's the real Cliff Richard song. I have seen him live twice:
Valid rant.
ReplyDeleteThanks GZ. If my dad was alive and with me he would have asked to see the manager. Why is it presumed that we all have computers and bank cards or even the internet?
ReplyDeleteThese days it's about the convenience of the company not the customer.
ReplyDeleteYou have seen Cliff twice? I can understand that because his singing voice is very similar to that of Steve Walsh. Didn't Kansas cover "Summer Holiday" and "Bachelor Boy"?
ReplyDeleteYes Marlene I agree. It seems to be " take it or leave it". It must be very difficult for old people who have never used technology and queued up and paid cash. In previous trips to Blighty I have been unable to pay for drinks, camp sites or Travelodges. Now I take a card. What happened to the customer is always right?
ReplyDeleteYes YP. At Greenbelt Christian music festival in the early eighties. I also saw U2 before they were famous. Kansas have or had Christian members and songs like Carry On You Wayward Son is a classic example of their Christian influence. I still can't believe I finally got to see them live in 2014. What a prog band!
ReplyDeleteI think its all one big conspiracy to make us all electronically trackable 🤣
ReplyDeleteYes TM I agree. Paper money will be no more. I will be snookered at my carboot plant sales won't I just? 🤔
ReplyDeleteBarter.
DeleteI do that now.
DeleteKafkaesque.
ReplyDeleteYes good description Tasker. Electronic bureaucracy gone mad. 1984 also comes to mind. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteWe are in the grip of no paper tickets, no cash. I see Blair is in favour of AI taking over everything with all the right answers.
ReplyDeleteI think we are like king Canute with the no paper tickets and no cash Rachel. I best get rid of all those white five pound notes😊. It's a joke but no one is laughing. Thanks for your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI meant Rachel that we are sat in the tide of no paper and cash and telling the waves of so called progress to go back. The young people think nothing of it. They know nothing different.
ReplyDeleteI even was told at the airport my paper boarding card print out was too big to access the airport turnstiles and to make them smaller in future. Big Brother is watching!