Jan.

Myleene Klass is driving me mad. I was lucky enough to be able to retire early and fill some of my time doing a soft music show on Sunday evenings for a local radio station. I learned lots of things – such as how naive I had been to assume all presenters were live in the studios. Now I know why John Brunning managed to do his Smooth Classics at 7 show all the year round whilst not doing the news programme that used to be on before it on certain weeks because he was evidently on holiday !

Anyway, i discovered that many national radio programmes are what they call “voice tracked” – those of you who already know this please don’t call me names, I just simply never thought of this before I got into radio. For those who don’t know, the presenter gets a list of the music he’s going to be playing, then he records “links” between the tracks, or between the tracks and the news, etc. I am quite certain MK does this and that she doesn’t conveniently get up at some crazy hour to be in the studios Saturday and Sunday at 7 am. Nothing wrong with that. However, you can almost predict what she’s going to say. E.g. (music ends)… “The second movement of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by xxxxx. Coming next, a piano piece by a man who loved his umbrellas…”(music follows). If you haven’t heard it, just listen for a couple of hours – I’ll bet you hear that format at least 4 or 5 times. Yuk. There is no warmth in her voice, no drooling over the music (some of which, in fairness, is quite beautiful). But the show is listenable to despite her presenting, not because of it. Why, oh why, do they pay her obviously a fair amount of money ( because she is a so-called celebrity) when people like Mark are exiled to China?

I will not even start on the other celebs – fortunately I don’t listen in when they’re on, but I do like to tune in on weekend mornings the same as every other morning early on. I’ve grown used to Jane now – at least she makes an attempt to sound warm and enthuses – maybe too much, some would say- but the cold fish style of Miss Klass means I have to keep putting my head under the pillow between tracks!!

Best wishes to all. I’m glad this thread is being used again – I could never quite get used to that other site they shunted us off to!

Cheers. Phil

Mr O’Riordan, I echo Jonathan’s comment that you are entitled to your view: but then, by the same token, so are we. Your view is no more valid than you think ours is.

Jan.

As for putting whoever “you” are in a “smug little ‘box’”, nowhere have I or anyone else claimed to be doing anything other than expressing our own opinions. As far as I’m concerned, you are entitled to your view, even though you show such discourtesy to those with differing opinions. Having said that, I would note that yours is the first comment here (or in any other forum I’ve seen) to be pushing a different view in the two years since the changes took place.

I’ve just read the T&Cs, and it says, “You must have your ticket collection reference, and (unless stated otherwise) the credit/debit card used to make the purchase as identification.” It also says, “f you are unable to collect your tickets (for example due to the ticket machine(s) being out of service) then you should contact the station staff for further assistance. If there are no staff at the station, you should board your booked train, and make yourself known to the on-train staff at the earliest possible opportunity.”

As I see it, you had the card used to buy the tickets just as required. It doesn’t say the card still needs to be valid at time of collection. The card is being used for identification, not to make a payment.

I suggest you write to customer services, explaining what happened, and providing printouts of receipts and any unused tickets. The address is above. As I said before, don’t bother with the refunds department, go straight to customer services.