Archive for the Travel Category

MyRail Lite… an update

16/04/2009 by The Daily Male.

In the continuing saga of MyRail lite I thought I would update you on my progress. After getting a rather bland response to my complaint from NRE I decided to complain to the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) about what I believe to be restrictive practice on the part of NRE. I have had a response to say that they will be investigating NRE and advised that I may want to contact the competition commission, which I will do this weekend. I will let you know how it goes.

Here is the letter I got from the OFT (Consumer Direct)

Dear [The Daily Male],

Thank you for your enquiry to Consumer Direct dated 06/04/09. Your reference number for this case is [removed] and should be quoted in all further correspondence regarding this case.

Based on the information that you have provided, there is legislation in place that prohibits businesses from advertising ‘free’ services that are actually not free, so the details will be passed to Trading Standards. If an officer requires any further information, they shall contact you within 5 working days on receipt of this enquiry.

We thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.

In order to assist you further, you may wish to consider also reporting this matter to the Competition Commission who are an independent body and may be able to offer some further information:-

http://www.competition-commission.org.uk/

CC Public Enquiries: +44 (0)20 7271 0243

E-mail: info@cc.gsi.gov.uk

I trust the above information is of some assistance to you. If you require any further information or clarification on this case please do not hesitate to contact Consumer Direct quoting your above reference number on Tel No: 08454 04 05 06 our offices are opened Monday to Friday 8am - 6.30pm and Saturday 9am - 1pm. If this is not convenient please feel free to contact me at the email address below.

Thank you for your enquiry.

Yours sincerely,

[removed]

Consumer Direct South East

Posted in Society, Travel | Print | 3 Comments »

National Rail Enquiries (update)

02/04/2009 by The Daily Male.

In an earlier post (This weeks greediest corporation award goes too….) I named and shamed Network Rail. I also wrote to them to outline my anger and accused them of sharp and uncompetitive practice. This was their reply.

Network Rail Email

Dear [The Daily Male]

Thank you for your eMail.

I am sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the cost of the National Rail Enquiries iPhone Application and the subsequent withdrawal of the MyRail Lite iPhone Application.

I can confirm that we did not withdraw the real time licence for MyRail Lite as the application was never licensed to use that data in the first place.

Although the MyRailLite application was not licenced to use National Rail Enquiries real time data, National Rail Enquiries did suggest an alternative solution to enable the product to continue but the developers refused.

National Rail Enquiries has not imposed a limitation on developing rail applications for iPhone. Timetable data is widely available and developers are free to use such data to develop applications if they wish having sought the relevant permissions from the industry data providers.

National Rail Enquiries provides a number of mobile web services including the iPhone application, which does have a one time £4.99 download fee. Our other services include WAP (though iPhones do not support WAP) and our PDA site at pda.ojp.nationalrail.co.uk, which are free to use.

The cost of the iPhone Application is not for the data but development and support costs. The data is offered to users of the application for free and the same data can be accessed through other channels such as the website.

Regards,

[removed]

Customer Services

www.nationalrail.co.uk

The implication from this email is that rail timetable data is FREE to use and only the app development costs have led to the £5 cost of the rail enquiries app. This is even worse. They have admitted that they are providing free data to their own app developers but restricting the flow of this free data to any or all rivals based on their own licensing rules. This is most definitely uncompetitive behaviour and my next course of action will be to contact the OFT (Office of fair trading) and request an investigation into Network Rail Enquiries practices.

Posted in Technology, Society, Travel | Print | 2 Comments »

This weeks greediest corporation award goes too….

31/03/2009 by The Daily Male.

Network Rail.

Why? well let me explain. I have an Apple iTouch, a fantastic piece of kit and especially because you can download loads of funky new apps. One in particular, MyRail, a FREE app, was very good indeed and allowed you to view live departure and arrival information for any train station. However this app no longer works because Network Rail have not renewed the licence for the app owners to use their live data. At the same time Network Rail have introduced their own app that does exactly the same job except they want us to pay a fiver to use it. The greedy bast%*#s.

Here is my call to all iPhone and iTouch users… Boycott the Network Rail app.

Posted in Technology, Society, Travel | Print | 1 Comment »

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