The Bus Chronicles: My complaint to the Bee Network, and their response

A week ago I wrote a formal complaint to The Bee Network about the service provided by the 385 since the 5th January.

While acknowledging that we are only six weeks into being part of The Bee Network, and that Diamond have only had the contract for those six weeks, the concerns I laid out were as follows:

• The service is now less reliable than it was prior to joining the Bee Network
• While the service at 7:25am on weekdays is as reliable as it was when D&G were running it, the service at 4:30pm is woefully bad, characterised by buses that are regularly more than 10 minutes late or which do not turn up at all. In the period between the 3rd February and 14th February, the 4:30pm bus was on time three times. It was twenty minutes late on two occasions, over ten minutes late on three occasions and on one occasion did not arrive at all. 
• Drivers don't always know the route and have to be directed by passengers. (This happened on the 7th February and was such an experience that I considered writing about it here, before concluding that it would be punching down of the worst kind.)

I could have said more, specifically about some of the more minor annoyances that have happened over the past six weeks such as buses that aren't displaying the number or location on the front of the bus, internal digital route displays that show the wrong route or the bus going in the opposite direction to where it's actually going, or the card scanners that didn't work properly for most of the first two or three weeks. Not to mention the drivers who have a distinctly robust approach to the many speed bumps that litter the route. But I decided to keep it simple in the end because I can tell, even at this early stage of proceedings, that this probably won't be the last time that I feel driven to complain about the 385. Plus there's a character limit of 1800 on the online form, so I couldn't get carried away even if I wanted to.

The response I received back a few days ago was.... Not bad, just... Disappointing.

The main problem was that it didn't engage at all with the fact that I was complaining specifically about a named bus route, ie the 385. Instead it talked only about the bus services that had joined the Bee Network on the 5th January as a whole. 

It was nicely apologetic in tone and there was a load of nicely worded stuff about how the Bee Network is a really big thing and that nothing like this has really been attempted for 40 years. Which is fair enough, and is a part of the response that I had anticipated. It's not their fault that they're sending it to someone who's been writing about, and campaigning for, bus re-regulation for years and who, as such, isn't that dazzled by that kind of rhetoric anymore.

The overall tone is apologetic and they do acknowledge that they are aware of "some disruption to services that joined the network in January", which does at least suggest someone is reading all of those Rate Your Journey surveys that I and other people have been sending in. 

They also acknowledge the important role that customer feedback has in improving services, which is good, as it suggests that they are at least in listening mode. Working "with operators to improve services" also sounds good, but when you think about it, it just means that this is how it works with franchising: They can talk to the operators and ask them to improve, whereas before franchising, they couldn't. 

The most interesting aspect of the response was the section that talked of their "Performance Managers" who monitor services. Which makes me wonder if they are connected to pre-Bee Network Bus Inspectors, who used to be the only people you could appeal to when your bus service was being crap. For example, during 2020 when buses were supposed to be running at 50% capacity under Covid regulations, I wrote to Stagecoach and asked them to put a Bus Inspector at the main 192 stop in Stockport because the drivers were taking the piss and filling the bus to over 100% capacity and having a bus inspector at Manchester Piccadilly had helped at that end with this problem. They did stick a Bus Inspector on in Stockport, but it only knocked the capacity back to about 75% instead, so not much changed. Anyway, it is to be hoped that the Performance Managers will prove useful and that at least one of them will be having a little chat with Diamond about how they can improve things. 

They did point out that punctuality has improved as the new service has settled in, which I guess it has: The 4:30pm 385 was twenty minutes late or didn't turn up at all most of the time for the first few weeks in January, now it only does that a couple of times a week. I guess that's progress. Sort of.

Because I mentioned several occasions of waiting over 20 minutes for the 385 before giving up and moving to the 383 bus stop to get the 5:03pm service, they have also pointed me to the Bee Network app. Which I haven't used since the 5th January when it either couldn't or wouldn't tell me where the 4:30pm 385 had got to. I suppose I should give it another try, but I suspect returning to using the superstops will be a more reliable way of getting home in a timely fashion. Or walking home instead.