LeeBandoni.com | Affiliate Marketing | Business Views |

I am going to London on Tuesday and need to get the train to a place called Clacton On Sea so I decided to book tickets on the Virgin Trains website.

When you go to the Virgin website you have a simple requirements panel which I entered my details in and hit submit. You are then shown options including timetable, journey times etc which should make it nice and easy to book … you would think

The main issue is that after your shown what trains are available then you really have no instructions to follow so it takes about 10 clicks to get onto the actual booking page which eventually lets you buy your train tickets. Once your purchase is completed you are then returned to the virgin train home page and sit back to wait on your tickets arriving.

So I admit I don’t use trains much but when I opened the post I got 2 train tickets and 2 underground tickets which was a surprise to me as I was told on the website I would be going directly from London Euston to Clacton On Sea.

I thought the best idea would be to call Virgin and after 25 minutes on hold I got told that I would be getting the underground from Euston at 11.25 then a train from Liverpool Street at 12.08. At no time had anyone told me I was going from a different station or using the underground.

So I think I have worked out why it takes 25 minutes to talk to anyone at Virgin Trains! All of the staff are busy trying to translate what your true journey is and trying to provide you with reference material to help you along.

I think its about time Virgin Trains

• Offer better online booking
• Provide each ticket owner with an online planner
• Hire a few more call centre staff
• Offer tickets which people can read (rather than a lot of abbreviated crap)

By following my requests I’m sure more people would have the confidence to book trains and think of it as a viable alternative to the cheap airlines which DO provide all the functions I describe!

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