Lost Property Shambles!

[whole diary]

[GaryM]

Last week my mother managed to leave a bunch of keys in the toilet on one of the platforms of a FGW^▸ (First Great Western) station. We went back the next day but unfortunately they were already gone. Hoping a cleaner had found them and handed them in, we asked at the station office only to be told that if they had been found then they would have been sent on to the lost property office in Bristol.

No problem I thought so I looked on the FGW website to find that I should allow 5 days before calling the lost property phone number to give lost property time to arrive and be checked in which I did.

So today I phoned the lost property line to find that I end up at what appears to be an Indian call centre. With all due respect to them they are just doing their job so it's not their fault but having to explain exact details of all the keys and then explain what a "Ford" key and a "Renault" key actually was didn't really inspire much confidence. The operator then tells me to hold the line while they contact Bristol. Knowing that the information I had tried explaining to them was just going to be relayed onto someone else (Chinese whispers springs to mind here), it didn't really fill me with a lot of hope that the keys would be located. As it turned out though that was irrelevant anyway because Bristol apparently weren't answering their phone so I was just told to just try calling again later.

I ended up ringing twice more only to get a different operator and having to go through the same rigmarole of describing the lost keys each time but it was the same outcome every time with the Bristol office apparently not answering their phone! It seemed ludicrous that a middle man in India was just being used to relay information from me to Bristol so I asked for a direct number for Bristol only to be told that they don't know the actual number is so they can't give it out to me

By now I'm pulling my hair out because all I want to do is to speak to someone in Bristol and give them a first-hand description of the keys so I can find out if they've ended up there but it seems like an almost impossible task. How on earth are people supposed to try and get their lost property back?

Short of me actually getting in a car and driving to the Bristol lost property office in person, does anyone have a direct number or know how I can get in contact with the Bristol office without having to go through the Indian call centre?

[JayMac]

Whilst I don't know a direct number you could perhaps try contacting FGW^▸ (First Great Western) via twitter or their Facebook page.

I appreciate you may not use twitter or Facebook, but there's a good chance that if you do, contact with the lost property office can be expedited.

https://twitter.com/FGW

https://www.facebook.com/FirstGreatWestern

[John R]

I had a similar experience recently when I left my season ticket on the train on the way home. The lost property call centre was worse than useless.

Fortunately I retrieved the situation by popping down to the station 3 hours later when the same set was on its way back to London, the TM^‡(resolve) let me board to have a look for it, and the ticket had been handed in to the catering crew. Phew!

[EBrown]

I'm currently hearing a lot of rumours about what First Great Western are outsourcing to Serco.

Rumours I have heard so far are:
Online retail support - Serco
Some of CS - Serco
One (or more) tweeters - Serco

Serco does happen to have a big presence in India... Some people have presented me with some convincing ish evidence, but only rumours at present.

[JayMac]

Well Serco did purchase the Indian company Intelenet Global Services who in turn had purchased FirstInfo.

First Great Western's Customer Services is now contracted to Serco. Some stuff like twitter and Facebook is, I believe, still, in the main, 'in house' with Serco taking over at the weekends for example.


Paging Ollie for a fuller explanation of the current situation regarding FGW^▸ (First Great Western) CS (phone, email, snail mail), social media, telesales etc.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Meanwhile, GaryM, if it would help: I'd be happy to call in at the lost property office at Bristol Temple Meads on your behalf to make enquiries.

Depending on whether we get any other suggestions here on the forum, please do feel free to contact me with details by PM, and I'll turn up on their doorstep on Monday morning, if required ... 

[GaryM]

Thanks guys. I've just tried to phone again but it's turning out to be fruitless. The operator is clearly just reading from an on-screen script and after describing all my lost keys yet again I was put on hold so they could do a check. Approximately 10 seconds later they came back and said nothing had been found matching my description. There is no way they contacted Bristol in that time and I can't believe they managed to type in enough details to do thorough enough search in that short time scale so I have no faith whatsoever that a proper check is being done on the lost property inventory. It is just so frustrating.

I asked if I could speak to someone in Bristol direct and was again told that they have no number they can give me but said I could visit the Bristol office in person if I wanted to. This is really appalling customer service from FGW^▸ (First Great Western) when they are raking in so much profit.

I don't do facebook but I've now made my first ever tweet to @FGW so I shall see if there is any response and go from there.

@Chris - I really appreciate your offer to go to the office for me so many thanks for this. If no other options turn up I may well be in touch to take you up on your offer. It really shouldn't be like this though...customers having to rely on other customers to help them out

I wonder how many people actually get their lost property back which IS actually sitting in the store room at Bristol. Probably not many if my experience is anything to go by.

[GaryM]

Well I got a reply to my tweets only to confirm that other than visiting the lost property office in person, the only way of contacting them is via the Indian call centre. Completely useless and not helpful at all. Any FGW^▸ (First Great Western) customers better just pray they don't lose an item on a FGW train or premises because even if they have it there seems to be slim chance of actually getting it back.

I'll certainly be writing a letter of complaint to FGW about their unacceptable lost property service. It's clearly profit before customer service with this company.

I also have a good mind to make a FOI^▸ (Freedom of Information) request asking them to provide me with statistics on how many lost property items they took in last year and how many were actually reunited with their owners. I bet it's not many.

[JayMac]

Sorry to hear of your ongoing problems GaryM.

I will just point out though that an FOI^▸ (Freedom of Information) request will be fruitless. Freedom of Information legislation does not apply to private companies.

[GaryM]

Good point. Clouded by my frustration I actually forgot about that. I guess any figures will remain their secret.

[Timmer]

I agree, very poor service from FGW^▸ (First Great Western) on this occasion. There are just some services that you NEED to speak to someone on the ground in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) like lost property. How on earth can that be done thousands of miles away in India? Red card FGW. Not good enough.

I thought companies were scaling back the use of overseas call centres after so many complaints from customers. Obviously not.

With regards to Twitter. If it's manned by an outside company on weekends, it might be worth tweeting them again during the working week where you should be replied to by someone who actually works for FGW in the UK. They are usually very good.

[phile]

Well Serco did purchase the Indian company Intelenet Global Services who in turn had purchased FirstInfo.

First Great Western's Customer Services is now contracted to Serco. Some stuff like twitter and Facebook is, I believe, still, in the main, 'in house' with Serco taking over at the weekends for example.


Paging Ollie for a fuller explanation of the current situation regarding FGW^▸ (First Great Western) CS (phone, email, snail mail), social media, telesales etc.

Customer Services should be done in house not outsourced at all whether in India or not.   Terrible Customer Service.

[Ollie]

Paging Ollie for a fuller explanation of the current situation regarding FGW^▸ (First Great Western) CS (phone, email, snail mail), social media, telesales etc.

Facebook: Me and Jo
Twitter: Me and Serco
Phones/Emails/Letters: Can vary between Serco and the in house FGW team.
Telesales/Web Support: Serco

Note: Outsourced or not, Serco have guidlines from FGW to follow and the response would be the same whether directly employed by FGW or not

[GaryM]

The person who replied to me on twitter was "Alex". Does anyone know if he's from Serco or the in-house FGW^▸ (First Great Western) team?

[thetrout]

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) Lost Property has gone massively down hill over the years. Back in 2008 I left my holdal on the Luggage Rack after being distracted my by at the time employer phoning me to find out why I was late (Cogload Jn Point Failure )

Anyway I phoned FGW Customer Services and they said they wouldn't have anything on their systems for 48 hours at least so try calling back then.

Fortunately I never needed to as the bag was taken off at PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) and booked into Lost Property and the staff there had a brief look inside to see if there was any form on identification. Fortunately there were some things in the bag and my understanding following a conversation I had was that the person who searched my bag was very switched on regarding prescription pharmaceutical products They phoned my Doctors Surgery and asked them to get a message to me that the bag would be in Bristol after lunch the same day!

I was quite frankly amazed!

However since then things have gone massively down hill. Earlier this Year I left a Jiffy Bag with an HP RAID Controller Battery inside it. Only ^25 worth so not the end of the world, they're just hard to get hold of. The problem was the battery was faulty and anyone looking at it would have seen that (It exploded inside the server!! ). HP however always demand faulty parts are returned and they'll be on the phone to you every day, several times a day even at weekends if you fail to do so. Anyhow after the third day of them calling I slowly was considering purchasing a Battery off eBay and sending it off. Sadly they are serial numbered so that was not an option. Fortunately FGW confirmed that my package was in Bristol Lost Property Office and gave me a reference number to quote when collecting. I went down only to be told it was actually in London. Later in the week I went down and handed over the reference number. Shortly the chap came back and thrust a MacBook Pro under my nose. Tempting as it was to pick that up and leave I told him that it was the wrong item and asked him to double check. He seemed to think this was impossible. Further calls confirmed my battery was STILL in Bristol and I went back to get it the following week. By this time HP had sent me an invoice for the non returned part. I was unaware of this until I returned home 3 days later and I had already sent the item off. Since then they refused to accept that I sent it back despite providing a tracking number and then sent a Debt Collection Agency after me. Long story short I wrote to them stating the item had been returned and was delayed due to "human error". They wrote back to me asking for Names/Roles/Departments of everyone I'd spoken to at FGW, the time/date train I lost the item on and the ticket for the train I was on and finally a copy of a bank statement showing I had paid for the return postage (Would love to know how that works when it was prepaid by HP...). I wrote back to them with the same tracking information and stated that if they wished to pursue the matter then to send court papers to my local magistrates. Letter arrived 5 days later saying the dispute was had been closed