(16 Feb 2015, 9:43 am)Robert wrote The point i am trying to adopt is that although branding works 99.8% of the time, there is always that 0.2% when it doesn't. People at Ashington and Blyth probably don't allocate buses as badly as they do on purpse and when MAX and Sapphire buses (using this example again) cross, they can't switch them over meaning they have to stay on the services all day. 
I understand that people are able to tell the difference beween a double decker, single decker and a minibus. More people care about the features on the bus than the bus type itself so if a Fab56 B9 had to appear on service 60 (example - i am aware of the low bridge between Seaham and Parkside), they wouldn't care that much because it has free wifi anyway. In your Slimplicity example, did they just see a purple bus immediately assume that it was the bus they were waiting for did they recognise the vehicle type (and the purple)? If it is just the purple, would it have happened if a plain purple solar had came along (or even a branded one for that fact - from a distance you won't be able to clearly see the branding)? It just shows that eventhough a us is branded for a particular route, you still need to check the destination display rather than seeing a bus that you normally get and assume its the service you're waiting for. I very much support branding but i sometimes feel that customers sometimes rely on the system too much and don't bother to take that 2 second look up at the destination display. As i said at the very start of this post, branding can't work 100% of the time.

I really don't understand why you're suggesting that allocators don't allocate buses on purpose? As I said before, there's no such thing as an accidental allocation...

I'm not suggesting allocators (at any company or depot) allocate the wrong vehicle type for a bit of fun - that would be ludicrous - and there will be reasons behind an allocation. Tommy has previously suggested that Ashington sometimes wrongly allocate buses for engineering reasons. I'd imagine that this suggestion will be correct for a number of the incorrect allocations we've observed; however, it'd be naive of us to suggest that this could be the reason for an ongoing allocation. If a bus is broke - fix it. After there was quite an uproar on the forum a year or two ago (involving Go North East employees) about a Volvo B10BLE being allocated to Go North East's 2A/2C services on a daily basis to cover for a Mercedes Citaro which had been allocated to the "Laser" 35/35A services on a daily basis, Deptford was quite quick to get it sorted out... Prior to that, though, they were allocating that bus to the 2A/2C services purposefully every day.

I'm inclined to disagree with you in regards to people caring about the on-board features rather than the vehicle size. If it was possible, are you suggesting that customers on the Tyne Tees Xpress services wouldn't care if a Wi-Fi enabled Dennis MPD which featured the provision of power sockets was allocated to their peak-time service? If there's not enough seats for people to actually use the power sockets, then customers are going to be a little disgruntled.

I'm not suggesting that customers recognised the vehicle type, but did recognise the brand name of "SimpliCity" with regards to my anecdote involving the Optare Versa on service 9. The same probably has happened with the plain purple Scania L94s, and this is the downside of Go North East having both vehicle types going around in a plain purple base coat.

(16 Feb 2015, 9:53 am)mb134 wrote Not to do with branding as such, more bad assumpion, but when I went to meet my friends in Bedlington the other year they wanted to get the 2 to Morpeth. Now they were obviously accustomed to MPD's turning up, however one of those Scania (?) double deckers arrived (From the N-VVO or M-GRY batches), as I put my hand out they shouted "that's the X21", I had to point out that the destination clearly displayed the "2". So had I not been there, they would have missed their bus, showing to an extent that customers don't really look at the destination anymore, when they really need to be.

Exactly. I think, as enthusiasts, it's easy for us to assume that 'normal' customers cannot differentiate between different types of buses.

In reality, customers are able to differentiate between different types of buses owing to a number of reasons. We've established issues relating to branding, vehicle size and seating layout. As customers can differentiate between different vehicle types, they have become accustomed to assuming which service is approaching the bus stop when the destination display is not even legible. There are clear downsides to this, as we have established, and it's the reason why (to bring this back to the start of the debate):

(15 Feb 2015, 5:17 pm)Dan wrote there is a point in allocating the correct vehicles to bus services.