I have just been on the phone to FGW customer services about a refund that I never received for a cancelled train back in January.  I was transferred to the refunds department who could not find anything on the system but then went on to say that as Salisbury is a South West Trains station it is nothing to do with them.  I explained that the service which runs from Salisbury to Southampton is run by FGW and therefore they are obliged to make the refund.  I had even used their pre-addressed envelope and their own comments form in which I enclosed my tickets.  I was then told that they were the accounts department and that I needed Customer Services.  I explained againt that that is the phone number I had telephoned and was put through to her.  She said they only deal with refunds submitted from FGW stations.  I said again that I posted it the refund claim to them using one of their own envelopes and comments forms. 

They are now going to phone me back... 

Actually, I'm inclined to agree with him.   They are very polite, and they solicit input where I wouldn't have expected those input requests in a previous generation of railway operations.

The unfortanate thing is that once a company solicits and receive inputs from its customers, it  also establishes a very high level of expectation that it's going to not only listen but also answer the questions that were actually asked and also act meaningfully and positively based on the inputs.   With FGW, there seem to be far too many cases of the inputs being taken as opportunities for the company to tell its own story about how well it is doing, even where that's not actually answering the question that was asked, or taking overwhelming consultation inputs and takeing no actives which even start to meet the aspirations raised.

From my own (Swindon to Westbury line) area, I can find numerous cases where a question about the poor service on our line has been answered with re-assurances about improvements that are planned on the Westbury to Bristol line,  and consultatation inputs that repeatedly asked for the one remaining evening train to be moved earlier (into the peak hour) as was intended by the DfT specification, but which were "answered" by the service being moved later instead.

FGW does listen.  It just doesn't respond to what it hears - it responds to what it had wanted to hear.

Yes, I fear that's how "more listening" will turn out to be used, to the exclusion of an appropriate reaction to the inputs.  I hope I'm wrong; I have no objection to hearing more general positive news in addition to news, answers and actions based on my inputs.

I finally received a letter back yesterday regarding the unanswered complaint.  They offered as a "goodwill gesture" to send me some rail vouchers if I telephoned them to say how much the ticket was.  I duly telephoned this morning and got to speak to the same person who sent the letter.  She was very pleasant and ammenable but kept reiterating the goodwill gesture aspect of the refund...

They also sent me £3 in rail vouchers for the cancelled 07.37 service Salisbury to Southampton.  I always thought you got back 50% of the total price of the return ticket but no, it seems it is only 25% of a return and 50% of a single. 

I agree with your sentiments.  It's probably 'cost' me more in time and aggravation to chase this up but as you say it all helps to keep their attention so worth chasing.