(14 Jul 2014, 9:44 am)AdamY wrote There is an element of truth to the comment posted by the GNE customer services representative. Ideally, people should take more responsibility in ensuring that plenty of time is allowed for travelling to destinations especially where connecting services are used. To me, that's common sense.

The problem with that particular reply, in my view, was that no additional information was ascertained in relation to the problem. From what I can gather, the customer was waiting for the first 56 of the day which arrived 5 minutes late. This subsequently made the customer miss her connection. Because it was the first bus of the day - it's hardly fair to ask the customer to go for an earlier bus. Because no attempt was made to discover where the customer was travelling, no additional advice could be offered on alternative travelling arrangements.

Also, if the first bus of the day is always 5 minutes late - then it's up to the bus operator to sort out the issue. It is not the customer's fault and no driver should be put under pressure to 'make up time' in an attempt to resolve the issue.

Regularly the same driver who does that run - at least from my experience anyway.

Not sure why he's consistently late out of the depot, but he must set off from the depot when he's actually due to leave Park Lane. It's nothing to do with the timings being tight or whatever because he is even scheduled to have layover in Park Lane prior to working service 56 - so it's down to the driver giving himself an extra little bit of time in the depot. As he usually makes up time by Concord, I suspect management will be unaware of there actually being an issue - of course now it may be a slightly different story, given that there has been a customer complaint.