London Midland are a joke

This blog is going to reflect the appalling way London Midland fails miserably to give it's customers on the line in to Euston anything approaching what could be called a "service". Since the company took over the franchise a few years ago from Silverlink the weekend service particularly has turned to rat shit, Sundays are a joke. They trumpet their customer service, their "APP" which we are encouraged to download, their website, all of which fail to give customers what they really need, accurate up to the minute information on when they can hope to actually see a train. Take Sunday 23rd June, yes there was over running engineering work, but the abysmal information London Midland continued to spout had more to do with fiction and wishful thinking than fact. It wasn't until another very pissed off passenger starting harassing the company via social media that we discovered no trains had actually left Bletchley or Milton Keynes. The first train was alleged to be departing from our local station at 8:06, at 8:05 the lieing Departure board said it was "On Time", the fib telling website said "On Time", the APP actually said the train had left Leighton Buzzard! At 8:06 a garbled voice came over the Public Address to say the train was cancelled. Well they must have known way before this point that the train had not even left, so why not update the information, not wait until the train is due to tell would be passengers it's not going to arrive. The proves that the London Midland Station signs, website and mobile APP just automatically follow the pre programmed timetable regardless of the current situation. One presumes this is because those in charge know the train is cancelled and have stayed in Bed, rather than go to work like the rest of us are trying to do. The next train was due at 8:39, we stood in the cold and rain until 8:44 when the Departure board changed to "Delayed". By this point you could say the 50 or so people waiting were getting seriously pissed off with the lies and misinformation. It was at this point the passenger sent the Twitter message to @Londonmidland which basically said " Has the fucking train actually left the Depot or Not?". Finally she received a reply "No". So London Midland what the fuck is the point of your Platform Departure boards,website and mobile APP, if you are not actually going to update them with "Live" information. One can but hope they lose this franchise and get replaced by a company who are actually interested in providing a service, not just ripping off passengers with ever increasing fares and ever decreasing levels of service.