PATransit Tuesday: Horrific “Customer Service”
Note: I’ve been sitting on this story for a week, hoping for resolution (hence no column last week). And in the meantime, I’ve listened to a lot of Lewis Black, so I’m going to pay myself on the back for not swearing or wiggling my fingers.
Today, I have a story to tell, about hellacious public relations by PAT. Normally they seem to be on the ball, but this is inexcusable, at least to me, at least for now.
About two weeks ago there were ‘unathorized’ flyers distributed on some of the buses. My route happened to be one of them. They weren’t copied well, when folded they didn’t match up, but I read it, and walked away with some concerns: mainly the same I’ve had all along. I still don’t know if I’ll have service. Here’s the run down:
- It has been stated that service to Monroeville will terminate at the Mall park ‘n ride.
- The map of the new P68 (or P67, can’t remember which at the moment) shows service going past Monroeville Mall, on one of the current routes
- It is noted that there will be three route variations
- Those variations are not listed anywhere
- PAT has said it will keep service to all Park ‘n Ride lots and open new ones, as well as create transportation hubs
So, will there be service to my local Park ‘n Ride which is past Monroeville Mall? The flyer said no.
I’m a little bit of a (read: a really big) dork, and while I don’t have a Twitter account, I read the Port Authority’s feed since it often has more information than their website. There was a message on it saying that if you had questions, to contact them via Twitter. Well, since I don’t have an account, I opted to instead use the form on the website to ask a question.
Here’s where things started to break down. I sent in my question, using complete sentences and explaining my situtation, including the unathorized flyers, the twitter account, all of it. I get a one line reply back the next day (to the best of my memory this is what it said, I can check it word for word when I have access to my e-mail tonight):
You need to send a letter to the TDP
That’s it. No help. Not even an offer to forward my question to the appropriate department, you know, like any reasonable customer service department would. Nothing. So I send an e-mail back asking for two things:
- An answer to my original question, will I still have service or was the brochure correct
- Some sort of explanation as to why I was not offered any kind of help whatsoever or even any kind of decency as a customer
It’s been a week. I haven’t gotten a response yet.
The flyers were a fake, and were not official; they were put together as propaganda by drivers opposing the realignment plans.
They were, and we were offered to contact PAT if we had questions about the flyers, which is what started all this.
The flyers did though provide more pertinant and complete information than anything I could find from PAT. I was kind of obsessive, trying to figure it all out and see what would become of my route, and in the final documetns that were approved, it looks like service to the Park ‘n Ride near me will be eliminated. Now, I might have missed it before, but I don’t think that I did. I’m certainly willing it give the new route system a chance, I love not driving the Parkway, although this will make it much more of a hassle for me, I just wish I could have gotten some sort of professional and kind response from PAT to start off with.