Irish Rail ticket refund!!!! Help!!!

schemingbohemia wrote: »

Any chance of re-writing this so that it's understandable? I haven't a clue what happened, what you allege you were told or what remedies you have pursued.

I rang customer care Monday last week to change the return leg of my trip to Tuesday. They guy said that it was ok and the best way to do it was to cancel the ticket for an 80% refund and just book a new ticket. I agreed to this and paid by card over the phone. I was told that the money would be refunded by Friday. He never mentioned sending back the original ticket at any stage. I thought that was sorted at this stage. By Monday the money still wasn't refunded but I said I'd give them some grace time. Still nothing by Wednesday so I called again and got through to the same guy again and he was confused as to why the money wasn't refunded and said he'd talk to accounts and call me back that evening. He took my phone number and I was expecting a call that evening but no call...

Still nothing by Thursday so I called again. (This is an 1850 premium number) This time I got through to another man who said I must send my ticket by post to them before any refund can go through. This was ten days after the original call and I had disposed of the ticket because I thought I didn't need it after the two previous calls I had made to the first guy. I asked to speak to a manager to explain the situation but she told me again to send back the ticket. I told her to listen to the call recordings to prove my point. She insisted that he would have told me about it. I asked her to check and she said that she would have to speak to higher management and she would get back to me by the end of the day at the latest. She promised she would anyway.
No call came and I called after lunch today again to get an update and to query as to why she never called me. She said that she was very busy that evening and this morning. Five minutes is all she needed. She said I had to send the ticket back after I had already said I'd threw it away. After I reminded her of that she said to write a letter outlining what happened.

It the worst experience I have ever had with customer service. Had the man said day one that I had to send back my ticket I would have changed arangements and taken the train I'd originally booked and avoid all this hastle. The fact is, is that I was told day one that I had to cancel my ticket and buy another under the advice of their agent. He never said I'd have to return the ticket to their offices in Dublin.To be told twice that I'd get a call back but never get one and have to chase them up constantly is ridiculous. The attitude of the manager was the worst I've ever come across. I asked for an address of their complaints department and she called it out as if it was a pointless exercise on my part. Obviously with someone like her in that position it's clear that they don't take notice of complaints.

I've spent over €20 on credit chasing them up but it's now become about a complete joke. What started out as trying to change a train to the next day has become a farce because of the actions of one of their agents and through no fault of my own.

I have posted off my letter today for the refund and have also sent a letter of complaint to Dublin but I seriously doubt anything will happen with either based on my experiences with Irish rail the last two weeks.

What concerns me most is that there are thousands of unemployed people in Ireland dying to work and would be fantastic doing that job but some of the people in there at the minute take it for granted and obviously don't have pride nor the appreciation of the job which they should.

Really reflects badly on the company to have a customer service like that. Although I'm sure that the vast majority do their job very well but a minority can give it a bad name very quickly and that's what people remember...