When the white heat of technology comes in really handy...

One of the biggest advantages (and sometimes, worst aspect) of modern technology is that you can vent your spleen quickly and efficiently. And so, discovering that National Express East Anglia's Customer Relations e-mail address is in my AOL account...

Dear Customer Relations,

I thought that I should drop you a note to record my disappointment at your company's failure to fulfil its obligations on my journey this morning.

I'm on the 8.29 from Stowmarket, with an Advance ticket. My ticket comes with a seat reservation for seat 53A in coach F. Unfortunately, there is no coach F. There is a coach E, with a seat 53A, which has no reservation slip on it and is, in any event unusable as the upholstery is smeared with something brown and sticky looking.

The guard, Louis, has not made any announcement about the problem with coach F and, when I asked him about this, he responded that a number of people had already asked similarly. It doesn't seemed to have dawned on him that this might be a problem especially if, like me, they had booked well in advance to get a table seat.

This is, sadly, an all too frequent occurrence on your Mainline services, in that the failure to place reservation slips causes passengers to sit in seats reserved by others. It makes having a reservation pointless because, whilst one can sit somewhere else, one then risks finding oneself in a seat reserved by someone else. It almost seems as though NXEA takes a perverse delight in making the travelling experience as stressful as possible.

I look forward to receipt of your response in due course.

Yours sincerely, etc. etc.

Press send, wait for response...