Introducing the Crap Service of the Week Award - this week's winner: Transport for London

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I am happy to announce a brand new weekly feature to this blog.

I have decided to call it the “Crap Service of the Week Award”.

This award will be given  to those who strive to deliver sub-standard service, achieving a truly dismal performance in return for our hard-eard cash.

Restaurants, shops, taxis, the bank – watch out, I am on the prowl for juicy gems of truly dismal customer service.

To make this weekly feature a bit more interesting, I am asking YOU to contact me with your own personal experiences.

Shops, utility companies, transport firms, no-one is exempt - if  you have paid them, and they have failed to deliver, I am prepared to name and shame them.

(Get in touch through the email address above, the comment box, or tweet me @expressnathan)

I feel it is time we, the great British public, stopped putting up with scowls from shop assistants, arguments with waitresses  because you complain when your order is an hour late, and disinterested half-apologies when you fail to get value for money.

To launch this prestigious award, the crown goes to my favourite lost cause – Transport for London.

They never fail to amaze me at how hard they are prepared to strive to deliver poor service.

They reach a level of incompetence on a regular basis that is truly unique.

The disinterest of their staff, their ability to say they are performing well as trains stand motionless in sweltering tunnels for two hours because of faults (as happened this week), the filthy carriages, their half-hearted apologies for the relentless delays and cancellations, the list is endless.

This week’s golden nugget from Tfl:  As hundreds of passengers crammed onto the DlR platform at Bank Station, London, after a day of utter chaos due to TfL’s ineptitude, an announcement came over the tanoy from a tube official:

“We are unable to give you a destination of this train.”

Through sighs of exasperation of the hundreds of people desperate to get home, I heard one woman groan: “So we are going on a mystery tour, I have never heard such rubbish in my life”.

Truly disgraceful TfL, total and utter pants.

Watch this space for my latest analysis of TfL’s slack attitude and the response I received from Mike Brown, managing director of London Underground, following a week of chaos on the tubes.

Anyway, I proudly announce Transport for London as the winner of this week’s Crap Service Award.

A truly worthy recipient.

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