UKC

I’ve just returned from an interesting day in London. I was due to return on the lowland sleeper last night, which was cancelled due to the inclement weather. I have to say, the customer service from Caledonian Sleeper was exceptional. The trains were left in a platform overnight at Euston last night for anyone with a ticket to stay on if required, and everyone with a seat ticket was bumped into a room. A porridge and a coffee arrived at my door at 07:00 this morning, free. A full refund was automatically issued, no action required, and they arranged ticket acceptance to travel with other operators yesterday and today. Lounge access was offered this morning for anyone who had stayed on the sleeper, and every single member of their staff – on the train and in the lounge – was unfailingly friendly and unfailingly helpful.

I can’t stress enough just how impressed I am with the entire experience – and that’s not a sentence you often hear in relation to a train cancellation.

Glad you had a good experience, but considering the prices they charge I'd expect good customer service as a minimum

Considering how much the last train I took (not a sleeper) was I'd be expecting a four poster bed, entertainment and a slap up meal.

I got a seat.

And by a "seat" I mean a patch of floor by the bogs where I could put my bag down and sit on my bag.  Many other people didn't get that because there wasn't even room for them to crouch down.

The train was late but the delay-repay/refund system didn't work. I'm in discussion with the train company.

By discussion I mean I email them, I get an automated reply saying they will reply to me promptly (in 20 days), after 20 days they don't reply and I email them again.

The prices for a bed are a bit extortionate, but I see the £50 seat Edinburgh-London as outstanding value, particularly as the fare is predictable and the cancellation policy is fantastic if your travel requirements need to be flexible. I know I can get to London and back for £100 - or less - and I don't have to look at fares or consider how big an impact travel has on profitability when I say yes, or rush to book trains while the work particulars like call times are still evolving. And I save a hotel in many cases (because the last train to Scotland is frustratingly early in the evening). Win.

Perhaps more relatable for a climbing forum, a £55 single London-Highlands, arriving suitably early to make fullest use of the day, must be decent in the value stakes.

I think it's important to acknowledge good experiences when they happen, particularly as the normal experience of rail travel in the UK is so abysmally poor. 

To put it in perspective, over the last few years I've gotten night coaches from Stirling/Glasgow-London Victoria from £12-18 each way. You also get the benefit of travelling through the night. Compared with £50 for a seat or £225 for a bunk on the Caledonian. 

This is good value *if* you can sleep on a coach. 

My daughter got the overnight sleeper to Cornwall from London last year. She was raving about the outstanding service on that as well. 

I assume it was made with salt and water, none of this milk and sugar soft Southern nonsense?

I'm not sure if they still run it, but Megabus (I think) for a while ran a coach with bunks. It was okay, but a bit like trying to sleep in an alpine hut. Or perhaps an 18th century ship of the line. I think on the whole I'd prefer the seat on the train unless funds were very tight.

I still fondly recall the Bargain Berths that the sleeper service used to offer before the current operators took over - they were proper good value (usually £25-£50) and meant one, if forward-thinking, and lucky, enough, could have a reasonably civilised start and finish to a trip to the Highlands

I love the sleeper! I use it frequently for visiting my family. Yes, it's significantly more expensive than Megabus et al, but I actually sleep, the customer service is great, and I don't have to spend over an hour shivering at Milton Keynes bus station at 3am.

Having said that, I was also in London for work yesterday. I travelled up and down the Avanti West Coast line because work won't pay for the sleeper. Their customer service on an unpredictable day wasn't quite as outstanding as you've just described, but was also pretty good - good information, bumped onto another service with no fuss, reimbursed for the delay, and free tea/coffee/snacks when we got delayed en route.

Coach seat for £20 or train seat for £50. Can't sleep in either.

At least on the train you can stand up and have a stretch, or go to the loo. Also (personally) I can read on a train, but trying to do so in the car leads to travel sickness. None of these change the fact you can't sleep in an upright seat, but at least they make the insomnia less miserable.

I'd expect long distance coaches to have on board loo. Usually beside the rear door.

In reply to mashpal:

Bot alert.....

This reminds me, we had a similarly good experience with Travelski when our train to France was cancelled due to the Eurostar flooding at New Year. We were at St Pancras and it was a bit chaotic so we headed home. On the way home Travelski called us proactively, told us to book flights and taxis and that they would reimburse us. We booked flights, taxis and transfers and left later that day, emailing our receipts when we got to the airport. The money was back with us within a week with no questions asked. Would definitely recommend their service.

Coach seat - and potential neighbour traveller - for £20 or train row of two seats for £50*. At least one can lie down across the row on the train.

I don't drive, so I travel by train a lot. I don't think I've seen a pair of seats I could lie down on, without my legs dangling somewhere. Three seats is probably pushing it, too. Not sure how you're getting those two train seats for the price of one ticket. Maybe that's what your * was going to comment on.

The SnowTrain sleeper service was by far my favourite way of going skiing.

Have you ever used a coach toilet?

Last few times I've travelled they have been out of order, on previous trips they were 'unpleasant', especially for those who need to sit to pee.  Better than nothing yes, but.....

Yes. I could say the same about train toilets, other than that they are bigger than coach toilets.

Yeah, I thought so, too. Especially after reading its other posts.

Already reported...

Whilst prices have become a bit silly now, I really enjoyed my sleeper train to Fort William pre the recent upgrades. And that's despite my personal feck up when I left my canoe paddles in the guards van which was going to Aberdeen, having moved the rest of my stuff. My own customer service experience after that was great, one of the very few time I've been updated pro-actively by a business I'd contacted, and who rang me back several times over the next few days to update me on attempts to find my paddles in various stations' lost luggage departments across Scotland and in London. Those paddles are still out there, but I do remember that they tried! And it was entirely my fault...

There's actually something I still find weirdly exciting about long train journeys, especially sleeper trains. Waking up on the track alongside Loch Lomond on a lovely sunny morning and then standing with the door window open all the way to Fort William was magical. The cabin, then, was small and a bit shabby but I'd lucked out and not had to share. This was a good thing as I had a huge bag with a folding canoe in it (the bit I did remember to move from the guards' van!). I didn't sleep brilliantly, but I did sleep, and that was partly excitement about the concept of a long weekend in Knoydart by train and folding canoe from Hove on the South Coast. I slept like a log on the return leg and woke as we came into London. At the time it was about the price of two Premier Inn nights, so whilst they would have been more comfy, they wouldn't have moved 400 miles overnight. I guess I'm an old romantic paying for, and enjoying, a slightly run down and bouncy form of travel just because it was quite fun. 

Far worse for comfort, but just as exciting, was a rickety sleeper across Turkey a few years back. That was, at least, cheap.

My first UK sleeper experience was a little different. Back in the 80s, they did a Mad March fare for Student Railcards that was basically £10 to go anywhere on the network. We were at Portsmouth Poly, so chose Mallaig, obviously. 
We didn't have cabins, just the seating. Everybody who fancied a party ended up  in our carriage, everybody who didn't ended up in the other carriages (plenty of room thankfully and nobody seemed to mind). The steward with the drinks trolley ended up passed out in the carriage with us and a bunch of eclectic characters, trolley pretty much empty. One chap kept buying rounds, as it was his first day free after doing time in Parkhurst for murder, or so he said. Some Dutch fellows also kept buying rounds, well after we'd run out of money. My next memory is lying on the platform at Glasgow Central attempting to sober up enough by eating Casey Jones burgers, to enable us to zig zag across to Queen St to get the onward train to Fort William, where we camped in the snowy marsh behind the distillery. Those were the days, etc, etc...

Previous to that my main memory of sleeper trains is from France, aged 11, waking up halfway down from the 3rd tier bunk, having fallen out in my sleep. Many folk have the falling dream, but mine turned out to be reality!

 

I always find it uncanny but I must have a reasonable working memory of familiar usernames......I think I joined this forum in 2007 when I was laid up after some knee surgery....there's been many coming and going since then but i did have a reflective moment looking at your post that made me realise that ukc forum has been a constant in my life for a long time!!

It never crossed my mind at the time but as you say, on checking all their posts from today, I'd definitely agree!

Going to sleep in London or soon after and waking up alongside Loch Lomond is just magical isn't it.

I agree the staff of the Caledonian Sleeper are and have, in my experience, always been excellent. Unfortunately, the new rolling stock falls ver far short of excellent.

If you are travelling alone and can afford the cost of a cabin the it is good, though no better than the old rolling stock.

Otherwise it is very cramped due to poor design. The accommodation looks good but it is style over substance.

Dave

As far as I'm aware, the sleeper service don't sell seats next to occupied seats - so if you reserve a seat in the row of two (the seating is 2+1), you get both seats. At 5'8 I can just about curl up on the seats, though I wouldn't claim it's a brilliant substitute for a bed.

If this isn't just a hangover from more Covidy times, it does rather make you wonder why they designed it like that, since they don't, as far as I know, run the carriages on anything other than sleeper services. 

On the old seats, I could just about get manage to lie across two, either with shins dangling or knees bent right up. Not wonderfully comfortable, but at least being horizontal seems to be better for sleeping, such as it was.
I've only had the '+1' side of the new seats, but I could imagine there may have originally been a thought to design the two on the other side of the aisle to discretely discourage sleeping across them both, and nudge grubby spacehogs towards coughing up for an actual berth

My biggest issue with the seats is the window-side arm rest; the gap it creates between the seat and the window precludes comfortable sleeping against the window and jabs you in the ribs (or the back if you turn your back to it).

Not about trains, but customer service. Max Spielmann, the high street chain of photography services that it is perhaps easy to be sniffy about, were great for me today. I went in to get a "photo mug" done (i.e. an image of your choice, printed onto a mug) as it is the last day of their January half price sale. Due to some befuddlement and ineptitude on my part, I somehow sent a 400 * 175 pixel image to the machine, instead of a 3200 * 1400, resulting predictably in some nasty pixelisation even on the small printed images on the mug. Totally my fault and I just asked them to do me second order, with the image at the proper resolution, acknowledging that it was my mistake and fully expecting to pay (did not even try a cheeky "can I get this one refunded?"; I said I'd just use it as my office mug). Went to pick up the second one half an hour later and they just gave it to me.