(04 Aug 2014, 6:58 pm)danpick wrote The critertia thing for favoured depot doesn't list Riverside.

Drivers for Riverside start at Saltmeadows first.

The driver of 7524 on my X22 home tonight, smiling and when I gave him my teencard proceeded to ask where I was going by using my name, making the whole thing more friendly and after a tough day it was refreshing

My first car which I bought and insured today for me to start using from Sunday!!

Re Work Experience, I did another 5 weeks voluntary work with Stagecoach (They paid my bus travel etc) on the engineering side. I don't think I would be in the apprenticeship I am now, on the railway - which was something I've always wanted to work in.

Connexions at my school were crap - they didn't really understand anything about the transport industry!
I'd say most definitely that experience serves more value than qualifications, as qualifications say you were good in an exam and are merely a bit of paper. IMO anyway.

(06 Aug 2014, 9:39 pm)northern156 wrote My first car which I bought and insured today for me to start using from Sunday!!

Re Work Experience, I did another 5 weeks voluntary work with Stagecoach (They paid my bus travel etc) on the engineering side. I don't think I would be in the apprenticeship I am now, on the railway - which was something I've always wanted to work in.

Connexions at my school were crap - they didn't really understand anything about the transport industry!
I'd say most definitely that experience serves more value than qualifications, as qualifications say you were good in an exam and are merely a bit of paper. IMO anyway.

Gonna take me for a spin in your motor sometime Sean lol

Not a happy situation really, but happy with how it was dealt with, seen a man possibly having a stroke on a bus in Hendon earlier on, guy couldn't stand up, speech was slurred and the right side of his face was drooping, heard the guys son say he was recovering from a recent stroke but said something just wasn't right...I know the bus driver has a duty of care to passengers but the bus driver was great, the guy just wanted to get home and the driver was adamant he sat down and called the ambulance...Even apologised to me and the other passengers for the inconvenience saying 'there was no way I was letting him off the bus', I just said 'nothing to apologise for mate you did the right'...

I would expect the same courtesy towards me if I needed help and it would be scandalous if the driver just let him go...Top marks to the driver

Seen something quite brilliant on my way to work today.

Lad gets on the 21 in front of me (alone), and asks "can I have a family buzzfare?"
Driver replies with a stern "No."
Lad replies "Eh whys that like?"
Driver responds "Where's your family like?"

Lad gives up and just asks for a single instead.

(08 Aug 2014, 9:40 pm)aureolin wrote Seen something quite brilliant on my way to work today.

Lad gets on the 21 in front of me (alone), and asks "can I have a family buzzfare?"
Driver replies with a stern "No."
Lad replies "Eh whys that like?"
Driver responds "Where's your family like?"

Lad gives up and just asks for a single instead.

Well there all imaginary you see until I get to Newcastle, Then we are off to Wet N Wild for the Day.

(08 Aug 2014, 9:40 pm)aureolin wrote Seen something quite brilliant on my way to work today.

Lad gets on the 21 in front of me (alone), and asks "can I have a family buzzfare?"
Driver replies with a stern "No."
Lad replies "Eh whys that like?"
Driver responds "Where's your family like?"

Lad gives up and just asks for a single instead.

I've seen people trying to pass for half fare before too.

(08 Aug 2014, 9:53 pm)Jimmi wrote I've seen people trying to pass for half fare before too.

I quite often see people try and blag half fare. I remember doing it myself for years on days I forgot my Orange pass. was just funny to hear the driver's response.

(07 Aug 2014, 4:04 pm)marxistafozzski wrote Not a happy situation really, but happy with how it was dealt with, seen a man possibly having a stroke on a bus in Hendon earlier on, guy couldn't stand up, speech was slurred and the right side of his face was drooping, heard the guys son say he was recovering from a recent stroke but said something just wasn't right...I know the bus driver has a duty of care to passengers but the bus driver was great, the guy just wanted to get home and the driver was adamant he sat down and called the ambulance...Even apologised to me and the other passengers for the inconvenience saying 'there was no way I was letting him off the bus', I just said 'nothing to apologise for mate you did the right'...

I would expect the same courtesy towards me if I needed help and it would be scandalous if the driver just let him go...Top marks to the driver

Top marks to that driver and hopefully he did enough to help his passenger out.

The Wi-Fi on GNE 6045. Not only did it work first time, but it connected within seconds, and it appears to be very fast indeed today. I'm easily pleased.

(08 Aug 2014, 10:02 pm)aureolin wrote I quite often see people try and blag half fare. I remember doing it myself for years on days I forgot my Orange pass. was just funny to hear the driver's response.

I could never blag a half fare when I was younger, in County Durham we had to pay full from 13, and because of my 'had a hard paper round appearance' I was rarely able to blag the driver...Though if my uncle was driving he would let me on for half, if he was having a good day, he would let me for nothing. My favourite blag when I was at college was pulling a £20 note out at 8am, Driver would have no change, tell me to get on and see him when we got to Durham, as it was mostly students with passes and employees with week/month tickets the driver would never take much money and I would always with a free ride...

(09 Aug 2014, 6:07 am)Andreos Constantopolous wrote Top marks to that driver and hopefully he did enough to help his passenger out.

I could not pick a fault at the drivers response, he did great, stopped the bus, radioed his control, Phoned the Ambulance, tried to comfort the guy and let the rest of us know what he was doing and why, he even apologized to us, even though he did not need to, I don't know Stagecoach policy on this, but he seemed to deal with it by the book...So yeah, I will say enough was done to help the guy, as much as a bus driver can actually do

(09 Aug 2014, 7:51 am)marxistafozzski wrote Though if my uncle was driving he would let me on for half, if he was having a good day, he would let me for nothing.

My neighbours son breifly worked at Arriva Bishop Auckland Depot and he would let us on free too as he always seemed to be on the 4/4A.

He got sick of the job especially after an old woman got on the bus one day and then she shouted at him because she was on the wrong bus.

(09 Aug 2014, 7:51 am)marxistafozzski wrote I could never blag a half fare when I was younger, in County Durham we had to pay full from 13, and because of my 'had a hard paper round appearance' I was rarely able to blag the driver...Though if my uncle was driving he would let me on for half, if he was having a good day, he would let me for nothing. My favourite blag when I was at college was pulling a £20 note out at 8am, Driver would have no change, tell me to get on and see him when we got to Durham, as it was mostly students with passes and employees with week/month tickets the driver would never take much money and I would always with a free ride...


I could not pick a fault at the drivers response, he did great, stopped the bus, radioed his control, Phoned the Ambulance, tried to comfort the guy and let the rest of us know what he was doing and why, he even apologized to us, even though he did not need to, I don't know Stagecoach policy on this, but he seemed to deal with it by the book...So yeah, I will say enough was done to help the guy, as much as a bus driver can actually do

When I used to get the 50 on a morning, there was a bloke that done the £20 blag every other morning without fail. He knew no driver was going to bother giving him £19.50 chage for his 50p concessionary fare, so he must have saved a fortune over the time I'd seen him. It was literally every other morning.

I have to admit I have done the '£20 blag' on a couple of occasions.

In my defence it was never intentional. As an infrequent bus user it was simply a case of me not having the correct fare.

Glad to have my buses running on time again after the major disruption over the last fortnight owing to the resurfacing works at Harrowgate Hill.

After the way the Stagecoach bus driver dealt with the ill bloke I saw last week, I decided to write to them and tell them how impressed I was his attitude and how he dealt with it and we rarely hear about the good things drivers do...I emailed them on Friday Afternoon and the response has been pretty swift...

Dear Mr. Forster,

Thank you for your email received on Monday 11th August 2014, regarding one
of our drivers operating a service 11 on Thursday 7th August 2014.

With the information you have supplied I have written to the Driver and
passed on your kind words to him.

May I thank you for taking the time to bring this matter to our attention
to give us the opportunity to advise the driver of your appreciation of his
actions.

As you stated in your email regretfully a lot of the communications that we
do receive from customers do focus on incidents where things have gone
wrong and it is pleasing to receive feedback of a positive nature, where
drivers have carried out their duties in a professional manner.

On behalf of Stagecoach in Sunderland may I thank you for taking the time
to contact ourselves and if I can be of any further assistance to you on
this matter of any other matter concerning Stagecoach in Sunderland
services, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Laura Smith - Operations Manager - Sunderland

Leonie Zacharias
Administration Assistant

(11 Aug 2014, 10:59 am)marxistafozzski wrote After the way the Stagecoach bus driver dealt with the ill bloke I saw last week, I decided to write to them and tell them how impressed I was his attitude and how he dealt with it and we rarely hear about the good things drivers do...I emailed them on Friday Afternoon and the response has been pretty swift...

Laura is new in at Sunderland and she's been really helpful in e-mails to me since she started.

Great that it went so high up though.

In the post this morning was my new 18-22 Get Around card. It has an updated photo of myself that's a heck of a lot better than the monstrosity that was on my Under 18 card.

(11 Aug 2014, 11:26 am)Dan wrote Laura is new in at Sunderland and she's been really helpful in e-mails to me since she started.

Great that it went so high up though.

Is this Laura like the Depot Manager or something? I'm quite pleased it has gone up the food chain

(11 Aug 2014, 12:20 pm)marxistafozzski wrote Is this Laura like the Depot Manager or something? I'm quite pleased it has gone up the food chain

She's the Operations Manager at Sunderland
Anything that she doesn't know is not worth knowing to do with Sunderland, basically!

(11 Aug 2014, 12:28 pm)Dan wrote She's the Operations Manager at Sunderland
Anything that she doesn't know is not worth knowing to do with Sunderland, basically!

Sounds like Stagecoach in Sunderland have a very good asset there, the kind of person a bus company needs no doubt we will cross paths again sometime in the future

(11 Aug 2014, 11:26 am)Dan wrote Laura is new in at Sunderland and she's been really helpful in e-mails to me since she started.

Great that it went so high up though.

Yup, it's good that they've done that as a matter of course. I've never used Stagecoach enough to need to email them, but with ANE customer services, I wouldn't have any confidence in the driver actually receiving the feedback. With GNE, I've always just emailed or written directly to the MD with my odd occasions of praise in the past. I've always had a personal response too mind.

I have always found GNE to be good at responding to feedback, complaints, compliments, SNE were swift with this latest one and never had to deal with Arriva yet, though I had a problem years ago and was dealt with back in the mid-late 90's when they were still United

Picked up my A-Level results this morning. Managed to get As in Business and English Language, and a B in Theology. Also got an A* in my EPQ. Pleased to say my place at Northumbria Uni has been confirmed.

(14 Aug 2014, 9:02 am)Adam wrote Picked up my A-Level results this morning. Managed to get As in Business and English Language, and a B in Theology. Also got an A* in my EPQ. Pleased to say my place at Northumbria Uni has been confirmed.

Congrats =D, what was all that worrying about?

(14 Aug 2014, 9:05 am)Michael wrote Congrats =D, what was all that worrying about?

haha thank you

(14 Aug 2014, 9:02 am)Adam wrote Picked up my A-Level results this morning. Managed to get As in Business and English Language, and a B in Theology. Also got an A* in my EPQ. Pleased to say my place at Northumbria Uni has been confirmed.

Well done fella...

Theology, is that an interesting one to study?

(14 Aug 2014, 11:17 am)marxistafozzski wrote Well done fella...

Theology, is that an interesting one to study?

Thanks Fozz. Theology is really interesting in my view. It was split into Philosophy (looking at different philosophers arguing about each other's theories about stuff) and Ethics, which looks at morality and different theories which can be used in difficult decisions.

Anyway, going to be partying hard tonight with my mates

(14 Aug 2014, 12:47 pm)Adam wrote Thanks Fozz. Theology is really interesting in my view. It was split into Philosophy (looking at different philosophers arguing about each other's theories about stuff) and Ethics, which looks at morality and different theories which can be used in difficult decisions.

Anyway, going to be partying hard tonight with my mates

Far as I am concerned you should party for the rest of the month...

Theology sounds interesting to be honest, is religious study in there as well, cause one of my friends would like to maybe becoming a Pastor or something and he was saying Theology would be a qualification he would need. Also the Philosophy side of it, is that dealing with the likes of *So-crates and Plato...

All the best with Uni and all that, sure you will be fine

*I have been watching Bill and Ted too much