Twisted Kites

Was over at Malcolm’s blog looking at strange things passengers expect. This reminded me of one I heard a few months ago. A passenger was boarding a bus, it was about to depart. She was waiting for her friend who’ll ‘be here in a minute’. Not wanting to delay everybody else the passenger was asked exactly where her friend was, as we may well wait a few moments if the person is in the area (welll, the shopping bit near the fountain). Her reply was ‘he’s on the Northern line’. Brilliant.  Needless to say, off went the coach!

Further to the earlier posts about services and all that, it was unfortunate that Watford Gap (Roadchef) lost out on business on Sunday. Going north I instead called into Corley (Welcome Break) with 33 passengers. And returning from Manchester I actually had 81 on board! My previous post has the potential amount of business gained by the service station. Yesterday I did the same, however numbers were lower at 32 up/13 down (the difference a day makes!). But, profit is profit when it comes to business. And Roadchef don’t weem to want it.

Which is a shame, as the trip I was doing the last couple of days the passenger nearly always used to have some time at Watford Gap! Was actually quite nice to use Corley again instead, as I was based there when working from Nuneaton in the early Megabus days. At least we are ‘Welcome’ there.

So what’s the story with Watford Gap? Well I obviously cannot go into full details…

Each service station operator tends to have a coach drivers scheme, and each can be joined by any coach driver for any travel company. Roadchef, Moto and Welcome Break each have their own individual schemes. This usually consists of free or discounted meals and drinks for drivers and hostesses. Of course there is a limit, such as one drink, starter, main course and desert per visit, or a sandwich or something like that, bottled drinks not usually included and they must be consumed on the premises. These rules are sometimes overlooked at discretion of the site staff, but are only available when the coach staff are visiting professionally (i.e at work on a break or changeover, not valid for drivers who call in on a day off!). In addition to this, the driver often collects points, also awarded, maybe £2 per visit, usually on a card of via vouchers. The value accumulated can usually be spent anytime within the service stations shop or amenities. A condition of being given points is that the driver must bring passengers. Again extra points may be awarded at the discretion of site staff. There are often bonuses too, such as draws, competitions, vouchers and freebies issued from time to time.

All these benefits act as a sort of commission and appreciation of the driver bring passengers into the service station, many of which spend money there (at services highly inflated prices of course!), and also to encourage visits to their site instead of competitors.

Unfortunately there were a handful of drivers abusing the system. Maybe taking food away too often, not bringing passengers in (or refusing to let them off on a changeover), treating the food allowance like a local Tesco, and other things.

So how to fix this? Simple. Grab hold of these drivers. Tell them off, warn them, if they continue remove their driver scheme ‘cards’ and block them from the database (so they can’t rejoin the scheme).

Did Watford Gap do this? Nope. Firstly, they stopped issuing extra points and stuck to the rules of only accumulating points when you have passengers. No problem, those are the official rules so none of us were too fussed about that! Apart from the abusers who lied about having passengers. So theystopped issuing points full stop, but retained the food allowance. OK so that wasn’t as good,but to be honest again most of us weren’t too fussed as we don’t go there for the points, we just like a drink and a bite to eat while we’re waiting around.

So, many of us were making a point of showing we let our passengers use the services when we can. But that wasn’t enough as they’ve now stopped the free meals and drinks. For every Megabus/Stagecoach driver. None of us will pay full price for low-quality food! If we did that 5 days a week it’d work out cheaper to buy a brand new car!

But that’s not the main problem. It’s the discrimination against the company and the childish behaviour that’s riled us all (like at school, one’s been naughy you can all stay behind!). Of the hundreds of passengers that we do let through their doors each week, they are not noticing or are ignoring this fact and are accusing us of not taking any passengers in, and just getting all the free food we can! Not true at all.

Many of us wouldn’t mind paying for our food and drink, just not full price. But we believe, seeing as drivers join the schene individually (nothing to do with the company you work for), abusers should be treated individually, and drivers who have always played by the rules should not be treated like criminals. To us that do it properly, it’s like they’re saying to us “thank you for not abusing it and bringing passengers, now you’re not having a coffeeor anything now f*ck off, have a nice day”!

So obviously they don’t want the business, which seems a strange business plan to me! Of my handful of trips into Corley this week, I had a few coffees and a bite to eat (nothing much), made £10 in vouchers and they in return made hundreds of pounds from my passengers. I’m happy, passengers are happy, Welcome Break are happy. Simple.

Oh, and to cover the cost of these benefits, only a handful of passengers need to spend money in the service station. My benefits could be covered for a month by a single average coach load of passengers. So for those times we can’t let them off (usually when it’s late) there is no loss.

It’s mainly a few of the northern drivers that are the worst. The bring their coach down, hand over to one of ours, get their 3 course meal. Then when their return coach comes in 20 minutes early, they jump straight in and go. There aren’t many like that, usually the ones with the attitude problems who to be honest are not coach driver material and should be replaced, as they annoy passengers who in turn may travel with another company next time. Not good for us!

Most of us (those that do it right) still hope for a resolution as we like visiting Watford Gap, it’s a nice service station (especially after the refurb), staff are mostly friendly (most of which sympathise with us, they know first hand who is honest, etc.), location is ideal as we have m1 and M6 routes. But we don’t expect one anytime soon. Until maybe Roadchef review their figures as no more passenges are getting there, it will bring their earnings down, simple as that.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 15:50 and is filed under Weblog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.