Northern threatens delayed passenger with Twitter block

Rail firm Northern threatened to block a passenger from its Twitter feed for repeatedly complaining on the social media platform about her commute.

Vanessa Bremner from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, has been tweeting the @northernassist account since July about issues on her journey to Leeds.

Northern replied to one of her recent tweets, warning it could have to block her account for spamming.

"The only outlet we have is to go on their social media," she said.

Ms Bremner has been tweeting Northern about her journey, usually to ask why the trains are cancelled or delayed.

She said: "Because we are having to go on and keep asking the same questions day in day out, I have now been accused of spamming the Twitter feed and they have threatened to block me, because I am posting the same questions again and again.

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"But the reason for that is because the cancellations are happening every day and they are not responding to me by any other means."

The tweet Northern sent on Monday morning read: "Hi Vanessa, though we do understand your frustration in this regard, we do have a policy against spamming the Social Media feed, please refrain from doing this or we will be forced to block your account."

Ms Bremner told the BBC: "Since 1 July our train has been cancelled more often that it's run. It has been late every single day apart from one for months.

"As passengers, we have been making complaints, using the official email addresses, contacting Northern - they haven't responded once.

"If they don't want us complaining, they need to be sorting the services out and they need to be communicating with us."

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A Northern spokesperson said: "We are sorry for the disruption that Ms Bremner and other customers have faced on their commute.

"We have been in regular contact with Ms Bremner and met with her earlier this week to discuss the service and ensure she receives the compensation she is due.

"Anyone whose journey is delayed by 30 minutes or more can apply for full compensation via Delay Repay."

Prices for rail users are due to increase by an average of 3.1% from 2 January, it has been announced by the Rail Delivery Group.

This follows a year of disruption on some lines, and means the cost of many rail season tickets will increase by more than £100 next year.

It prompted one popular tweet from a Twitter user, who compared Northern to a somewhat inadequate boyfriend.

This week, Northern announced it would be running fewer than a third of its services on Saturdays in the run-up to Christmas, with "very few" trains in the evening.