Train operartor First Capital Connect (FCC) won The Times’ annual Scrooge of the Year 2009 award last month. Many FCC customers who travel daily from Bedfordshire will know about a tongue-in-cheek parody website, , which is aimed at raising awareness of the ‘poor train services’ offered. Lui Straccia spoke to the brains behind the ‘Crapital’ website, Raymond Dunthorne.
To beat banks and the Government to a Scrooge of the Year award in 2009 was some achievement – but First Capital Connect managed it.
You might have thought the expenses scandal and the recession would surely have seen MPs being prime candidates for securing the accolade.
But, according to Raymond Dunthorne, if you think like that, you are probably not a First Capital Connect (FCC) customer.
Mr Dunthorne, 44, is singlehandedly spearheading an online crusade to mock FCC into ‘providing better services’.
His website,
, was launched in December 2008 and has seen a large number of visits - 30,000 different people have logged on to it in the past 13 months.
Many of those are believed to be from passengers affected by a row over drivers’ pay during the past couple of months which has reduced FCC’s ability to deliver services the way it would like.
Mr Dunthorne, who along with his girlfriend uses FCC every day to commute from their St Albans home to London, said: “It’s just getting more expensive. All of the little things, each of which cause a bit of degradation to the service, mount up.
“I’m talking about things like FCC’s general lack of awareness of what is needed, the fact the fines are wrong, the announcements at the station are wrong, station signage is hopelessly inaccurate and pricing is ridiculous.
The business model is just about collecting revenue.
“Being an internet nerd, I did a bit of research online and I became quite cross. I worked out my girlfriend and I were spending £6,000 a year for our 20 minute train journey.
“There’s no way we can get from St Albans to London any other way each day.
“I wanted to find out where our money was going. I wanted to make other people aware.”
The train driver pay row began causing havoc with journeys in November, bringing misery to the lives of hundreds of commuters.
Mr Dunthorne added: “It’s not the drivers’ fault. They’re not on strike. They’re just working hours.
“The Government said drivers are holding passengers to ransom, but that is not true.
“I didn’t draw up the website to moan and complain. I just wanted to get people interested. This is something everyone in the country is paying for, whether they are a passenger or not.
“I wanted to engage people, make it a good read.”
In 2005 the Department for Transport announced that First Group (which owns FCC) had been awarded contracts to run the Greater Western franchise and the Thameslink/GN franchise from April 2006.
It is for this reason Mr Dunthorne believes FCC should be providing ‘a much better service’, and he was not surprised when the firm won the Scrooge of the Year 2009 award.
He said: “I thought it was a good end to the year.
“It’s a step closer to making things change.
“I don’t want FCC to lose the franchise – I want it to be great.”
Not surprisingly, Mr Dunthorne’s website has not gone unnoticed by FCC.
A spokesman for the company said: “We have been in touch with the author, asked to meet him, and clarified points where possible.
“The website has been around for over a year and has gathered momentum as we started pay talks with our drivers leading to a revised service.
“Our aim is to get the service back to normal and we believe this would then reflect in the feedback on the site.”