Customer Complaint #1

My email to East Coast Mainline:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was disgusted by the treatment I received from your ticket inspectors at Peterborough station.  A male inspector was incredibly rude to me as I tried to get through the barriers to catch my train, which was about to leave.

He checked my ticket and informed me that, as I had no reservation for the Peterborough-London leg of the journey (it was a single through to Bristol TM), then I could not pass.  I calmly explained to him that I was booked onto a First Capital Connect train, and that reservations could not be made, but he totally ignored me, repeating loudly that I should check the ticket machine for reservations that I'd left behind.  I told him this was unnecessary, as reservations could not be made for that leg.  He continued to loudly repeat that I should check the machine.  I asked him to stop, as I wanted to discuss it properly, at which point he accused me of rudeness.  

He then snatched my tickets and went to 'check with a supervisor'.  Bewildered at his lack of understanding of train tickets (at one point he told me my reservation for the First Great Western train from Paddington to Bristol TM was a 'return', which it obviously wasn't, nor could it be) I turned to his partner, and showed her the booking on my phone.  She ignored me completely.  The man then returned, silently handing my tickets back.  I thanked him as he let me through, but heard him say to his partner 'they had no reservation, we can't do anything now', implying that we were somehow still in the wrong.  I managed to catch my train with seconds to spare.

I find this behaviour totally unacceptable.  It added a layer of stress to an already stressful journey (Spalding-Bristol is a long trip), and showed how little some employees of your company care about customer service.  I will avoid using ECM trains wherever possible until I get an apology.