Kate Griffin freelance journalism and editing

I should offer warm thanks to Stagecoach Oxfordshire for providing me with a perfect example of the behaviour I’ve blogged about: responding slowly to direct complaints but paying rapt attention to social media.

I’ve written a lot recently about how organisations set up their channels of communication to make complaining difficult or fruitless.

What’s causing the current unemployment problems? According to Iain Duncan Smith, it’s a failure to look beyond your home town for work. He gives the example of Merthyr Tydfil, whose inhabitants “didn’t know that if they got on a bus, an hour’s journey, they’d be in Cardiff and they could look for the job there”.

Today's tale is my experience of buying train tickets from the First Great Western website. I was trying to buy a ticket from Oxford to London, returning on the following day.

I wanted to see all the return tickets available

• What I did: chose “return” and typed in the dates of travel.
• What I got: lots of different single ticket types, then one choice of return ticket (an off-peak return).

The rising price of crude oil is affecting the price of all sorts of things, from the food on your table to the clothes  you’re wearing. But the most direct effect has been on transport costs. The mainstream media bemoans the plight of two-car families, but people on lower incomes have been hit much harder. Here’s how to save money  on your transport costs.