(originally published April 25th, 2005)

My wife went to a conference this weekend, and because of circumstances she ended up taking the train. When we had looked it up online, it said that the trip should take 5 1/2 hours to NYC each way. However, it seems that the rail system has periods of construction, just like the highway system, where they’re doing construction, and they don’t have to announce it ahead of time. So, on the way down, the trip took 6 1/2 hours, after arriving here over an hour late. On the way back, the trip took her 8 1/2 hours on its own. Both ways, when she departed, there were no apologies, no courtesy services, no nothing; just goodbye.

Two years ago, I flew back and forth to Dallas for a consulting assignment for three weeks. Out of all those trips. only one of them was on time, and that was my first day, when I’d actually given up a seat and earned a free flight for anytime within a year and took a later flight. In each of those cases, the pilots apologized for the flights not being on time, but how many times can one be apologized to before someone decides it’s time to work on a solution so there doesn’t have to be so many apologies? Just to be fair, one of those times the flight was late was due to bad weather.

Last year my mother had a visit from her cousin, who took the bus from NYC to Rochester. The trip ended up taking two hours longer than advertised, and Mom’s cousin wasn’t happy at all. She said there were no long stops at all, just a miscalculation of how long the trip was supposed to take. And there was no one around to apologize for the length of the trip either; it was as if it was business as usual.

On the news there’s all this talk about companies such as these not making profits, with some entities threatening going out of business or raising prices. From a personal business perspective, why would I willingly wish to continue my associations on a regular basis if I knew I was going to lose money because of something out of my control? That talks to the train and bus issue; I’d be pretty much over a barrel if I had to fly somewhere, because the other options would take much longer, including driving by myself (has anyone ever made that NY to Vegas trip driving?).

Just asking, but if these particular types of service companies could tighten up their customer service a bit, as well as figure out a way to become more reliable with their times (forgiving weather circumstances), does anyone not believe that they might start attracting more regular customers?