(02 Jan 2016, 9:59 am)LeeCalder wrote Of course they do, that's common knowledge.
I can list many of TrentBarton's negatives having lived a few years in Tutbury in Hatton. However, in my opinion the positives outweigh the negatives. I could list negatives for each operator in the North East arm long if I wanted to, however, I won't because it will give you something else to criticise me about ;-)
I myself have a Mango card and use it every time I am down there, including on Thursday, have I ever had any problems with it? No.
YourBus if I'm honest to appear to be flagging. They run a service down every coridor TB do, including 'indigo', 'Red Arrow' and Heanor's H1' (Which won Brand of the Year)
Their fleet is quite tatty, and their drivers presentation doesn't appear to be too good. Let's have a comparison....
I'd also like to point out that I didn't see a single 'odd' panel whist in Nottingham, Hucknall, Heanor or Derby.
You wouldn't be criticised - but you would undoubtedly see a difference of opinion, with others giving opposing views.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with competing corridors. Competition, more often than not, delivers benefits to customers. You can use your local knowledge to back that up - Go North East implemented a competing service on the Tyne Valley corridor with free Wi-Fi and cheaper fares for anyone coming into Hexham or Newcastle on another Go North East service; and more recently, all of Go North East's "Coaster" branded Scania OmniCitys being given a deep clean (however substandard you think this this treatment is - it cost money!) and free Wi-Fi. You could suggest that, without competition on the route, this may not have been implemented as soon as it has been.
You can't do anything about accident damage - especially when it's not blameworthy of the company. The location of the missing branding on the Yourbus vehicle would certainly suggest a third party collided with the vehicle. I can only comment on Go North East's internal process for recording and re-applying missing branding, but it all takes time (and costs money!) I was really referring to the cleanliness of Yourbus' fleet and comparing that to Trent Barton's - I'm not sure whether it's to do with Trent's buses being brightly coloured drawing greater attention to dirt, but they really do seem to have the same problem as Go North East in that respect.