The plane or the train?

We have mixed ways of travelling between Edinburgh and London at FreeAgent. Some of the guys like to go by plane 'cos it's quicker. Others prefer the train so they can work on the journey.

I've tried both in the last couple of days. I flew to London (City Airport) yesterday evening, then after a seminar at the ICAEW this morning, I'm now on the train back home.

Why the different methods of travel? Simple. I'm going home to Carlisle which doesn't (yet?) have a passenger airport. That means I have to go home by train. And I needed to be in the office as long as possible yesterday, but be in London in time for dinner. That meant flying.

Unlike my sister (PR officer for the Vegan Society) I don't object to flying when needed. (Sorry Manda.) I prefer not to do it every week but quite happy to fly if it's the most practical way to travel for that particular journey.

Next time I go to London, I'll also be going by train, again because I'm travelling from Carlisle.

But if and when I travel between Edinburgh and London again, which method would I choose?

I have to say I think I'd plump for the plane.

I was only offline for just over an hour while the flight was airborne. I could quite happily work at the airport before the plane left (especially given I have my new company iPhone). And it meant spending less time squished into a tiny space with a bunch of random strangers :-) Also, never mind the on-train so-called quiet coach where you're not supposed to use mobiles - on the plane you physically can't use them. So writing articles and blog posts would be easier on the plane, in a quieter environment.

Perhaps it's also because there's no excitement about travelling by train any more now that I do it at least twice a week, but flying is still something of a novelty :-)

Price? Book early enough and the plane has it! My plane ticket cost me £40 (British Airways, Edinburgh to London City) and the single train ticket cost £58!

The plane's only downside is that take-off and landing do give me the blue spooks.

So all in all, definitely the plane wins!

British Airways needs a policy on big umbrellas

I'm flying from Edinburgh to London on British Airways later today.

Only staying one night, and need to get across London reasonably swiftly when I arrive, so am aiming to travel as light as I can, i.e. take just a cabin bag, no hold luggage, so I don't have to wait at baggage reclaim.

It's pouring here in Edinburgh (least it looks like pouring to this soft Southern Sassanach).

No problem, I thought, I have a big umbrella.

But that umbrella's too big to fit in my cabin bag, so will I have to check it in, I wondered?

Nothing about umbrellas on BA's website. When I searched it on the word "umbrella", I got marketing dross about "lying under a palm-fringed umbrella". I don't think there are many of those in Edinburgh. Or London.

So I rang BA's customer contact line (having found the number at the bottom of a page that took me through various website searches before it would show me a phone number).

The lady at the other end was very polite BUT she couldn't answer my question.

She said that the airport staff would be able to tell me whether:

• The umbrella would be classed as a "dangerous item", in which case I could carry it on board but would have to give it to the cabin crew to stow away during the flight, or
• The umbrella would have to be checked in.

I'm not taking the risk of having to check it in and make myself late.

Nor am I taking the risk of potentially having to surrender my umbrella at the airport. It's one thing to lose my shampoo because it's in too large a bottle. It's another to have to dump a very nice strong umbrella.

So I'll just have to get wet.

Brilliant.

UPDATE: I bought a cheap small umbrella to tuck in my cabin bag. Then saw a guy carrying a big umbrella on to the plane as hand luggage. Bother!

"The quiet coach is a myth"

Another instalment from the Not-So-Quiet-Coach on Virgin Trains.

Tonight's travel companions? A family with young children. Adults valiantly trying to keep them quiet, which is something.

Besuited man two rows ahead of me asked them to keep quiet in low but cross tones.

And then he complained to the train manager about it when she came to check the tickets. She said "We can't do anything about children in the quiet coach".

He gave her a hissed earful.

She turned away from him when it looked like he hadn't quite finished.

He grabbed his bag and stomped out of the coach.

Now I don't think that getting stroppy with the family was the approach I'd have taken. As an auntie of five I know that young children don't do quiet unless they're asleep.

But if the train manager can't / won't do anything, then as Relative Sanity quite rightly says, the quiet coach is a myth.

I don't think there's any point at all in forbidding customers to use mobile phones in here if Virgin aren't going to at least try and control noise created by other passengers.

Thankfully it doesn't cost extra to sit in here, which is something. But perhaps it should. I'd gladly pay a premium to sit in a genuinely quiet coach. And I do mean genuinely quiet. Not as it currently is.

Because it does make it very difficult to work if the environment is noisy.

Speed the day when I can afford to travel first class :-)

UPDATE: Another tweet contact has quite rightly pointed out that it can be awkward if a family's booked seats and have ended up in the quiet coach. Perhaps Virgin should add - or designate - a family coach.

UPDATE 2: I have contacted Virgin Trains customer service using the feedback form on their website, to give my feedback about the quiet coach issues I've encountered. Let's see what effect that has...

Sometimes it needs a real person

My browser of choice when I'm on my home PC is definitely Firefox.

I was using it to make a screencast a couple of weeks back and managed to lose not only the navigation bar but also the menu bar (the bit that says File, Edit, View, etc) which made life much harder.

All of a sudden navigation was well-nigh impossible and I was having to bite the bullet and use IE as my browser.

Then this afternoon I got fed up and pinged out a tweet asking if anyone knew how to fix the problem and bring back my menu bar.

Within seconds I got a reply from a friend with the answer - press Alt + F and the menu bar will temporarily reappear so that you can choose View, Menu Bar to turn it back on permanently.

Yay.

Firstly, thanks Patrick.

But there's also a lesson to learn here for customer service.

No matter how good your knowledge base, manual, website or other support documentation is, there are times when you do just want to ask a "real person", a "quick question".

This is why a phone or live chat support helpline is so valuable. Even if the answer to your question is in the support documentation, sometimes you just don't have time to wade through and find it.

And this is also why push-button helplines are a pain. Struggling through all those menus trying to work out which option you need... Oh for "press 1 to speak to a real person".

Or, even better would be, "Press 1 to speak to a real, intelligent person".

Car recovery and hire

Just back from a week's holiday in Northumberland.

Driving over there last Saturday, across a moorland road, a motorcyclist coming the other way lost control of his machine at a bend with nasty adverse camber, swerved over to the wrong side of the road - and went smack into the front of our car.

He ended up with two broken legs, a shattered pelvis, and a brand new motorbike in smithereens.

Thankfully on our side the only casualty was the car (written off). Matt and I were unhurt.

The RAC sent a local company, R S Johnson, to recover our car. The guy who turned up with the recovery truck was so friendly and helpful that we decided to also hire a car from them for the week of our holiday.

Again, great service. National car hire firms have bitten us with charges before now (like the one which charged us for a whole new bumper when all we did was knock off the rubber bumper protector). But these guys charged very reasonable fees and went out of their way to provide great service - including a lift to the station this morning to catch our train home.

In fact, all the local people we met were really helpful when they heard about our accident. The lady at the pub, the lady at the shop and at least one person in the street offered us lifts.

I love the North of England.

Why estate agents have a bad name

Commuting 3-4 days a week from Carlisle to Edinburgh is getting very tiring. I've decided to look for a little flat to rent in Edinburgh.

Arranged to view one this evening. I duly arrived. The agent duly arrived, and as we were climbing the stairs he mentioned that the existing tenant was still in (I knew that), and that he'd been advised we were coming - by e-mail.

Mmm, I thought, not a good idea, I hope the tenant received the e-mail.

Of course he hadn't. And of course he was cross that we'd effectively turned up unannounced. And of course he said it wasn't convenient for us to view the flat.

I wish I knew that poor guy's name so I could apologise to him. He looked like he'd just woken up when he answered the door. Perhaps he was a shift-worker catching up on his sleep.

But I'm seriously unimpressed with that agency. Here's why.

• They should have phoned the tenant to ask if it was convenient for us to visit - not e-mailed him. E-mails can get lost in cyberspace and can take longer than 24 hours to pick up and read.
• Without a reply to their e-mail, they should then have alerted me that they hadn't been able to reach the existing tenant, and asked me if I wanted to go round on the off-chance or leave it.

So I won't be going through that agency. Nice though the flat's location was, if that's an example of the service they provide to their tenants, I don't want to be one.

Virgin put their mistake right - bravo

During the Big January Freeze, Virgin Trains did jolly well in providing any train service at all here in the frozen North.

The trains did suffer delays, but cancellations were remarkably few in number.

The only problem happened on one day when the passenger door at the front of the train froze shut and wouldn't open to let me off at Haymarket.

By the time I'd made my way down the train to the next door, the driver had locked the doors - leaving me no choice but to stay on the train until Edinburgh Waverley.

Thankfully that's only 5 minutes away. But because my train was already a good hour late, rather than do the longer walk to the office from Waverley, I got a taxi.

I wrote to Virgin Trains explaining what had happened and asking them to reimburse my £8 taxi fare.

Then yesterday, a very polite and apologetic letter arrived in the post, with an £8 cheque attached.

Bravo Virgin, that's what I call good service.

A mistake was made but it was put right and due recompense made. You can't ask more than that.