SBB rocks

It took them a week to answer but here it is: Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 5:18:34 PM "Dear Mrs. xyz Thank you for your e-mail of 3 September 2008. We are delighted that you chose to travel by train from Zurich HB to Zug the day before. Thank you for doing so. We would be pleased to provide you with a little background to your complaint. The Zürcher Verkehrsverbund (ZVV) orders and "buys" train operations from us at SBB, and bus and tram services in the city of Zurich from VBZ, etc. This enables you to travel on all trains, buses, trams and other public transport services in the ZVV tariff area with your ZVV ticket. The income from ZVV tickets is then refunded to the individual transport companies (SBB, VBZ, etc.) proportionally, based on a distribution formula. However, SBB is the sole operator of long-distance services, and so it is sales of "our" tickets (national tickets) alone that cover the costs of these. Therefore, if a limited-stop (SBB) train runs from outside the ZVV area into it, you will require a national ticket for this train up to its first stop in the ZVV area. If you had been travelling on a train that stopped in Thalwil, the combination of your national ticket from Thalwil to Zug and a ZVV travelcard for all zones would have been the correct one, because ZVV would then have reimbursed us for the Thalwil-Zurich part of the journey that your travelcard covered. However, on both the outward and return journeys, you travelled on a train which did not stop in Thalwil. We receive no reimbursement for this direct service to from Zurich HB to Zug and back, as we are the sole operator of the service. If we were to start accepting ZVV travelcards on these services, then we would effectively be paying ZVV part of the price of the ticket for a service that we were running in full ourselves (and they would not compensate us for this). Unfortunately we are unable to see why the train conductor accepted your combination of tickets on the outward part of your journey. It is clear that you did not receive this information when you purchased your ticket at the counter. We are therefore able to refund the duplicate tickets as a gesture of goodwill. We kindly ask you to send us the original tickets to the address below, quoting your customer number: 123. Thank you for your assistance.Yours sincerely," I take my hat off for SBB and promise to take the "right" train the next time.