(14 Mar 2015, 6:03 pm)Tommy_1581 wrote Why can't Arriva follow in GNE's footsteps and have NSA's and power sockets in all new buses. They shouldn't have to be a special feature to boast about.
It all boils down to money, Tommy. Although I can't remember the figures off the top of my head, it is actually very expensive to install Next Stop Announcements and Wi-Fi. There's obviously the ongoing cost of adding Wi-Fi, too, though Arriva North East does seem to be rolling out Wi-Fi as standard on a large number of vehicles now. As you can imagine, there's also a cost to add power sockets to buses, too.
As someone who loves branding and the benefits to both customers (and to a degree, the bus operators themselves, if branding assists in increasing the amount of passengers who use a service), the downsides to "Sapphire" and "MAX" are beginning to show as more and more services are converted to this specification. The issue I have is the inconsistencies between each "MAX" service, for example. The half-hearted refurbishments mean that you can step off one "MAX" specification service and onto another and the specification is completely different. I completely understand the reason why they're not having a full refurbishment as, at the rate of these services being converted, the cost would be huge, but when the presentation of the fleet is improving vastly, it's a shame attention to detail is lacking. As "MAX" is set up primarily for interurban services, wouldn't you expect high backed seating as standard, providing customers with a more superior level of comfort than a standard specification service? Sadly, Arriva is not providing high backed seating on all "MAX" services.
Features of "Sapphire" and "MAX" are being cherry-picked and placed on to standard specification services. Power sockets (on Durham's ADL Enviro200s), Wi-Fi (on many standard specification services), Next Stop Announcements (on some of Darlington's Pulsars), leather seats (on a number of vehicles), etc. This is another of my gripes.
Perhaps it's just me being picky and maybe "ordinary" customers wouldn't give a toss, but I think there's room for improvement. It'd be good if Arriva could start learning from their mistakes.
Go North East and Arriva have completely different business models. Go North East's revolves around branding as one of its main focuses. The advantage of this is that each brand is different and inconsistencies can be made. Why would a customer expect the same specification on the Fab56 as the X66, for an example? If both of these services were branded as the same thing, then customers might well expect the same specification on both services... Plug sockets, Wi-Fi and Next Stop Announcements are pretty much standard for all new orders, but if there's no point in going to the additional cost for that brand, then it's not really a big deal.
(14 Mar 2015, 6:07 pm)mb134 wrote Thought it was earlier than November?
Even so, Sundays have a far reduced vehicle requirement, why don't they use the 57-reg ones and get all of the 14-reg ones sorted out. I've noticed that on a number the next stop announcement display is shifted slightly to the right, so not everything is on the screen. Also, 7501 hasn't had NSA's working for several weeks to months.
The power sockets are also extremely iffy on all of the vehicles I've used them on, with an inconsistent supply, cutting out every couple of seconds.
I think that all of the issues that said batch of vehicles are facing relate to the Next Stop Announcements. The profiles are set incorrectly which is causing a number of issues, including those that have been mentioned above and destination displays "flashing" (ie sometimes going blank for a second or two randomly before showing normally again). Go North East had similar issues with their "Venture" branded Solo SRs when they first entered service, but the issues were promptly fixed.
Have you tried raising all of this with Customer Services? It's possible that Arriva isn't actually aware. It depends on what sort of quality checks are in place...