(23 Jan 2022, 10:16 pm)Ambassador wrote That same poster is on the bus stops around Chester Le Street as well, I only noticed by how massively unprofessional it looked with the header image stretched and the tiny font.

I get this happening across all operators but if your going to be all Billy Big Balls about your marketing and your buses, when the shit hits the fan, you can’t hide and it’s exactly what GNE are doing. The lack of social media replies and general defensiveness of the brand when they bother manning it is harking back to Kevin Carr and Huntley days.

imo the social media is the least of the problems, GNE have outright lost control of everything lately. They can keep blaming 'national driving shortages' but it's very much a GNE problem up here now (apart from Darlington a few days last week). Arriva Northumbria and Stagecoach at least from what I'm aware have been running a full timetable for weeks now excluding the few routes on lower frequencies so there isn't the problems happening but people don't care about that as long as it's frequent enough (GNE are the same regardless).

There's problems well beyond Covid at GNE, whether that's the fact they were days from a strike, there's been a court action from a respected ex Driver, there's a (I believe) ex driver from Stanley (Stanleyone) who has openly slagged off the gaffers yesterday, who has also opened posted people are leaving Stanley because of the abuse they're getting but I'm sure there's more than that, who has also revealed that there's been meetings to try and resolve the moral issues that went no-where.

Obviously we'll never get the true story but those aren't things which are normal in a well ran company and for a bit of balance there appears to be similar problems down at the Arriva Darlington (only) depot which is all over the place and has been all pandemic aswell and hasn't been as much problems at GNE Percy Main, Hexham or Peterlee depots in comparison to others.