Sir Richard Branson has been slammed on Twitter after a post about punctuality hit a nerve with Virgin Train commuters.
The billionaire tweeted:
The post also included a link to a blog post titled 'The Importance Of Being On Time'.
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It's safe to say the tweet didn't go down well with a lot people, especially those who have suffered Virgin Train delays and cancellations on more than one occasion.
One person commented: "I caught three of your trains yesterday, they were all late. I was organised and on time at the beginning, obviously late by the end of the day. You're right, it was annoying."
Another said: "I guess you don't travel on Virgin Trains then."
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A third person tweeted the billionaire saying: "It's a bit more difficult for people who have to rely on @VirginTrains rather than private jet..."
And one person pointed out statistics to the philanthropist saying: "After East Coast was privitised by Virgin, punctuality fell from 82 percent to 73 percent."
Basically, passengers are pissed off and there was a lot of shade thrown at the entrepreneur's train services.
Many people suggested the advice preached by Branson should be practiced by Virgin Trains.
In 2015 the Virgin Train's West Coast train service was actually confirmed to be the least punctual rail service in the UK, thanks to figures released by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) watchdog, with more than one in four of the company's West Coast services found to be running at least five minutes behind schedule
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This lent an unfortunate sense of irony to a piece of advice Branson gave via LinkedIn that year, when he wrote: "If you want to be more productive, then start at the start: get there on time."
In a blog post entitled 'Want to Be More Productive? Be More Punctual', the billionaire provided anecdotes about occasions when he'd jumped out of a car or taxi stuck in traffic, and ran to make his appointments on time.
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But despite criticism, Virgin's West Coast service is now far from the worst offender, according to Network Rail statistics.
In the period between 2017/18, the service - of which Branson owns 51 percent - had a public performance measure score of 90.8 percent.
The figures, which indicate the number of services that arrived within five minutes of their allocated times for short journeys and ten for longer ones, placed Virgin Trains West Coast above seven others including Great Western Railway and Greater Anglia.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: UK News, public transport, Trains, Richard Branson, Twitter
