10th March, 2010

Today was the online Meet the Managers forum. Send us your comments, they said. We will respond, they said. So I did. They didn't. If you want to have a read, here it is:

Dear Sirs

You might be surprised to learn that I am writing to congratulate you (yes, you did read that properly, congratulate).

When I last wrote to the virtual ‘Meet the Managers’ forum (14th December 2009), drawing attention to the abject misery that your so called 'service' was causing to us commuting folk, the purpose was 99.9% to provide me with just a little therapy to stave off the real prospect of my turning into a raging, gibbering madman every weekday morning and afternoon. The remaining 0.1% was a very faint hope that maybe, just maybe, adding my tuppenceworth to the mountain of complaints that must already have caused your post room and email servers to overflow might help encourage you to 'up your game'.

On reflection, and to my amazement, I think I can report success on both counts.

I can definitely report that searching desperately for some levity in the face of adversity has, indeed, been a real benefit during these long winter commuting months, and has probably staved off a brain aneurysm or two. So thank you for providing so much for us to try to laugh about.

As regards 'upping your game' your response has been quite incredible.

Looking back at the state of your service last November it seems to me that, at the most basic level, you faced three possible strategies as to how to manage the situation (assuming, that is, you believed you had a situation to manage and didn't just bury your heads in a heaving luggage rack and hope it would all go away):

Option 1. Carry on running the service as it was;
Option 2. Improve the service; or
Option 3. Make the service worse.

So what did you do?

Obviously no self respecting Virtual Management Team would choose Option 1. Leave things as they are? How would you justify your virtual existence? Also, I believe at least a few folk in reasonably high places were expecting at least some action from you.

The vast majority of sane observers would have thought Option 2 would be the obvious answer. After all, you were starting from a low base so improvement should have been easy. All you had to do was send a few more trains up and down the line at roughly the right times & we'd have been much happier.

But we'd reckoned without the intellectual capacity and of the FCC Virtual Management Team, and its ability to deliver when it really counts.

Option 1 anyone? Not possible, we’ve got to do something to keep the politicians happy. Option 2? Well it seems sensible enough. All in favour? Hang on minute, let's not be too hasty. We're still raking in the cash, we're not paying any overtime, profits are up and we've still got the franchise. What does our contract say we have to do?

Fortunately for me I'm not privy to the specific details of your contract. If I were then I might have been tempted to try and read it (although I suppose it might have seen me through a few journeys). I’m sure many lawyers were paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to write it, but it seems to me that its key content must be capable of being paraphrased as follows:

• Run a few trains in the general direction of London;
• oh, and could you run a few more during rush hour (just if it's not too much trouble);
• if it rains just do your best, we know it’s no fun in the rain;
• if it snows it’s probably not worth bothering, people will understand;
• no need to buy any new trains, just give the ones you’ve got a bit of a clean when you have a moment; and
• charge as much as you like.

So having read the contract the virtual Management Team has a dilemma:

• The contract says you have to run a service for the paying public, but the minimum service requirements it imposes are undemanding (or perhaps even non-existent).
• Your service currently stinks but it seems to meet the minimum requirements and you have, rather wonderfully, discovered that the worse it gets the more money you make.
• You have a customer base that is, almost to a man, disgusted with your service but many of whom have (a) already paid in advance for a year and (b) little alternative than to use your service.
• You also have a parent company that, presumably, is interested in profits and little else.
• Oh, and of course there are your bonuses to consider.

Do you:
• do the decent thing and improve the service for your customers (Option 2); or
• do the dastardly thing, work hard to make the service even worse, and improve your bottom line (Option 3)?

The evidence suggests that Option 3 was your clear choice albeit with a caveat that, no matter how token, there had to be some ‘window dressing’ to make it at least look as though you were trying to improve matters for the large number of people who, having paid you a significant amount of money, are rather inconveniently expecting you at least to transport them to and from their daily workplace, preferably on time and in a degree of comfort that you had recently been unable to provide.

This brings me to the first points on which I wish to congratulate you: (1) Having a proper understanding of your contract; (2) identifying the flaws in that contract that allow you to run the service in such a way that your profit increases as the service gets worse; and (3) bravely taking the decision to take full advantage of the contract flaws, regardless of the resulting misery you inflict on your paying customers.

Why was that a brave decision? Well because, thinking back to late 2009, it must have seemed an almost impossible task for you to make the service any worse. Obviously it would have been far easier to improve it, but that would have cost money. And this brings me on to my second point of congratulation. In the face of adversity (albeit with some assistance from the elements) you have managed to succeed in making an already shambolic service even worse! Here are just a few of your achievements:

• Introducing a new improved reduced service timetable which took full account of the number of drivers you didn’t have.
• Consistently failing to meet said timetable, presenting your adoring public with consistent delays, cancellations and even mystery trains that disappeared from the departure boards just as they were due to arrive.
• Failing to run a proper service (sometimes hardly any service at all) on days when it snowed, rained or was just a bit cold and damp.
• Running a fleet of rolling stock, a significant number of which don’t work in snow (a problem which didn’t seem to affect other operators to quite the same degree).
• Having to bus passengers to stations on other, working, lines when yours was not.
• Chopping 8 carriage trains in half thus creating more trains and enabling you to keep to a semblance of a timetable just so you could say you were delivering, whilst not caring that passengers were being left on the platforms as a result. I bet it was the fact that only one in every 4 carriages has a motor that prevented you sending single carriages down the line.
• Trains breaking down regularly, blocking the line so the rest of the service grinds to a halt.
• Terminating services at random destinations far short of those advertised due to ‘train failure’, ‘lack of available crew’ or simply an earlier delay making it a bit inconvenient to run that service to its intended destination.
• Informing passengers that a train will stop at all stations only for them to discover, once on board the moving train, that it does not.

So well done to you on taking a brave decision, and delivering the result you must have hoped for so spectacularly well. I hope that I am right in assuming you made a conscious decision to pursue Option 3. I couldn’t begin to imagine the levels of management incompetence that would be implied if you really had been trying to improve the service since late 2009 and had failed, so spectacularly, to do so.

And so on to the third and final point on which I wish to congratulate you. Having given us a taste of just how appallingly you can perform if you really put your minds to it, as far as I can tell you are now delivering something approaching the service we were originally complaining about towards the end of 2009. This time, however, instead of feeling rather put out that we are forced to travel on trains that are late, dirty, overcrowded, too [hot]/[cold] (delete as applicable), I now find myself feeling rather pleased when any train shows up at about the right time, almost regardless of the conditions inside. In short, you seem to have succeeded in bullying your rather inconvenient customers into accepting our miserable lot.

All in all this is quite some achievement. Perhaps even a textbook study in how to manage a service to maximise profit where there is no risk of either (a) losing your contract or (b) losing your customers. I am sure the First Group management and shareholders are delighted, and trust that your wallets are bulging.

All this, of course, is of no consolation to we poor passengers. Yes, you have offered us a 5% discount off the price of our next season ticket. You may think this is generous. I think it’s pathetic. After all we will still be paying you a large amount of money, in return for which I confidently predict that you will continue to treat us like dirt and provide us with an abysmal service.

All we can do is carry on laughing, and hoping, and my hopes are as follows:

1. That you have to travel to work on these trains too.
2. That you have misread your contract, and that (in common with properly drafted public service contracts) you are about to be hit with large scale financial penalties and the loss of your franchise for failing to deliver an acceptable service.
3. That one day you will find yourself having to deliver in a competitive market, where customers have a choice so that you are forced to realise what a proper service should look like, and discover what happens if yours is not acceptable.
4. That there is an afterlife, because if there is you will undoubtedly spend it suspended over hot coals while your sensitive underparts are prodded firmly with sharp implements, covered with jam and subjected to the tender ministrations of a swarm of angry wasps.

(By the way my guess is that you don't receive many letters of congratulation, so if you would like an original, signed copy to frame and hang in your, no doubt, lurid blue and pink boardroom you've only to ask and I will be happy to oblige.)

Oh yes, I almost forgot, got a bit carried away. Here is my question:

Referring to my list of management strategies above did you choose Option 1, Option 2 or Option 3?

Ever yours,
Ronald