The appalling replacement bus "service" being offered is totally unacceptable, and Southern Railways should be held to account.
On Saturday February 27th I had to travel to Buckinghamshire and National Rail Journey Planner was advising to use a replacement bus service to London Bridge and then the Northern line to Euston. Having found out from the TFL website the bus stop outside Barclays that should have used for the replacement bus had been closed due to the emergency gas works I called Southern Railways Customer Services to check which bus stop was being used instead, and for up to date information on any delays. They were totally unaware of either of these issues and maintained there was a service every 10 minutes but did try to call the station to see if they knew anything but nobody answered!
Having walked to the Perry Vale station entrance posters had been amended to show buses were leaving from the stop outside the Telephone Exchange but after waiting over 1 hour 40 minutes not one replacement service arrived! People continued to be redirected there by a station employee as did numerous 122 and 185 buses, so the traffic wasn't stopping those services from running. Tweets and phone calls to Customer services went answered, and eventually I gave up waiting and took a 185 to Catford Bridge from where I was able to get a South Eastern train to Charing Cross and then a Northern line tube to Euston. However what was meant to have been a 2 hour journey took over 4. Not a pleasant experience!
If Southern can't provide a replacement bus service we can rely on then they should make arrangements for regular TFL buses and other railway operators to accept tickets rather than customers having to incur extra charges to use other routes. In addition with all the modern technology available there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to ensure that the contractor they are using for these services communicate to them when issues occur so they can advise their own Customer Services, station staff and customers.