╠ Free Ride ╣

Most of you probably noticed the free metropolitan travel that happened on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Now I'm not sure about the rest of you but this was completely under advertised in my opinion. I only found out when going to my station in the morning when there is actually staff and as I was going to validate my ticket I was told there was free travel today. I was skeptical but went along with it. I later saw the small A4 sheet posted at each station clearly made in Microsoft Word that stated that there was free travel. Personally I didn't think that much of it, particularly in the morning it was more of an inconvenience to not validate due to my uneasyness and disbelief of it truly being free travel. Also later in the day ticket inspectors haunted every train I was on, not checking tickets obviously but still unnerving everyone else. I'm not sure if they were collecting statistics or what but it seemed plenty unnecessary.

This was a huge opportunity for Connex to get some good cred and they seem to have not taken it at all. Not having to pay for a day could make you feel so much better about them but the constant presence of inspectors on the train just makes you not able to forget how bad Connex is.

Sure they were forced into it by the travel minister but there was still so much more they could have done to improve the brand image in commuters minds. I consider this to be a huge chance wasted. They get another with New Years also being free travel but we'll have to wait to see if it's actually any better.