Unhappy commuters have hit back at claims that 83 per cent of London Midland’s passengers are satisfied with its service.
The train firm quoted the figure from a survey carried out by independent watchdog Passenger Focus after ranking sixth from the bottom in a customer poll by Which? about the best and worst UK train companies.
Hemel Hempstead commuter Harry Watson joined forces with Kings Langley train users Joanne Ashford and Jane Guaschi to conduct their own survey.
It revealed that two out of five commuters have got into trouble with their bosses for being late due to train delays.
Promoted via Twitter the questionnaire involved 300 London Midland customers.
Business transformation director Harry said: “The issues are constant lateness, not necessarily long periods of lateness, typically five to 10 minutes seems to be the norm but worse than that it’s the levels of communication.
“It is basically a poorly operated service in terms of time keeping and abysmal when it comes to communicating.
“The best bit of the service is their Twitter service, it is absolutely fantastic.”
The survey, carried out between January 7 and February 2, concluded that 75 per cent thought the service had deteriorated since July.
Harry, 56, said: “We didn’t try to contrive it. There were some positive comments - probably one in five was a positive or neutral comment.”
Passenger Focus manager Linda McCord said: “Passengers tell us that punctual trains are what they want most from the railway and London Midland’s recent performance has not been good enough.” London Midland said it would not comment on other people’s research.