South West Trains and Engineering work.

For the past couple of months Network Rail has had engineering work around the Southampton area on every weekend causing passengers to have to use a replacement bus service. Normally when this happens South West Trains run two replacement bus services. One a direct service from Southampton Airport Parkway to Bournemouth and a second that calls at the intermediate stations.

As you may know, I follow AFC Bournemouth and so on home days a commute down to Bournemouth is necessary. Normally I’d get off at Pokesdown station as this is the nearest to the ground. But on rail replacement days I don’t want the hassle of going on the bus that calls at every station to get to Pokesdown, so I catch the one direct to Bournemouth. This does push up the price of my ticket though but it’s my only realistic option.

So for the past couple of months, myself and many other AFC Bournemouth fans have been catching the bus down to Bournemouth. One of our regulars actually lives in Birmingham. Now that’s dedication.

South West Trains issued tweet the other day stating that they appreciate the patience of Southampton FC fans during the recent Engineering works. Erm so its only Southampton fans that use the trains then? I know plenty of us Bournemouth fans that have been inconvenienced as well. Plus we pay extra for the privilege. I'm sure that there are Portsmouth fans who travel through Southampton for their games that have been inconvenienced as well. Do we get a mention, no we don’t.

Maybe I'm being a bit over-sensitive on this, after all more Southampton fans would have been inconvenienced that from other clubs. But living in this area we do have to push Bournemouth to get a mention above Southampton. I think the last time we got mentioned on the local news ahead of Southampton was when we beat Man Utd in the cup and that was thirty years ago, back when Man Utd. Believe it or not Man Utd were a half decent team back then.

I’m sure South West Trains meant the tweet as a gesture of good will. However it grated with me and didn't help with my opinion of them. Lesson here is to think of all your customers when doing a tweet. They didn't need to mention Southampton FC at all in the tweet. I guess that that they were hoping that the tweet would get re-tweeted by Southampton fans or even mentioned in the press / match day programme. Thus raising their image. For me it actually lowered my image of them. As I said this may be an overreaction, but it’s how I feel and I'm not going to apologise for that.