Wed 7 December - No free tickets...

Seems I need to read things more carefully... Not only do you need to have MORE THAN three cancellations of the same train within a week, you also have to validate your ticket each time within half an hour of the scheduled departure time, then you only get one free ticket, not two.

So let's have a closer look at this. Four days out of five your regular train has to be cancelled. Having experienced four cancellations in six days, I struggle to imagine how angry I'd be if that were more frequent. Would a single $3.10 ticket compensate me for having lost God knows how much extra time due to their incompetence? It's not appropriate to publish my hourly rate here, but I would be looking for something in the region of $100 for my lost time - $3.10 just doesn't quite do it for me!

Then you need to look a little more closely at the validation requirement. OK, we're on a line with trains every 10-12 minutes in peak hour, but what about those people on a line where they're 20 minutes apart? Your 07:00 is cancelled, you wisely decide to let the 07:20 go as it'll be a double trainload, so you catch the 07:40 - bzzzt, no free tickets for you, sucker!

So my guess is nobody will ever make a claim under this rule. Here's the challenge Connex and Batchelor - build your compensation payments around peak hour trains only. Give ALL OF US, whatever ticket type we have, compensation when peak hour trains drop below 90%, as measured by my slightly less generous method. Then we'll see some real progress.

The 07:14 is on time, by the way!

The 18:01 is about three minutes late at Ripponlea.