Emily Cole has hit out at Virgin Trains after twice receiving dismissive, 'sexist' responses from the train company

Virgin Trains have been accused of 'everyday sexism' after dismissing a customer who complained about being called 'honey'.

Emily Cole was angry after a mistake on a train from Edinburgh to London left passengers unable to find their seats.

She says a worker for the train firm added insult to injury by calling her 'honey' when she tried to complain.

When she wrote about the man's 'patronising' response on Twitter, Virgin also shrugged off her complaint, asking: 'Would you prefer "pet" or "love" next time?'

The train company has since been deluged with messages from angry customers, branding their response sexist and demeaning.

The firm later apologised for the gaffe, saying: 'We apologise unreservedly for this tweet and any offence that it may have caused. To avoid causing more offence we have deleted the original post.'

Emily was left angry after Virgin responded to her complaint about being called 'honey' by a member of staff by asking whether she'd prefer to be called 'pet' or 'love'

Emily branded the company's online response 'misogynistic'. Virgin has now apologised

Describing the initial incident, Ms Cole told Metro: 'They told us they'd all made a mistake and we had to move to try and find seats with all our luggage in the packed train.

'The first person to check my ticket was very abrasive. His response to my explaining the situation, politely and honestly, and that I wanted to complain was 'you go ahead honey'.

'In the context and given his aggressive tone I can only assume he didn't like being, politely, challenged by a woman – it felt like a punch in the face.

'I tweeted Virgin and their response was patronising and belittling – just the behaviour I was complaining about. And would they tweet that to a guy? Nope.'

She tweeted about the incident: 'When Virgin Trains mess up and the older male train manager in the resulting conversation dismisses you with that hideously patronising word women shudder at in contexts such as these: "honey"'

Another passenger backed up her version of events, tweeting: 'He was male. I heard him. And it wasn't regionally appropriate. She was, legitimately, complaining about something else and his response was highly patronising.'

Others backed Emily on Twitter, saying the off-the-cuff response was a 'social media fail'

Other Twitter users also hit out at the firm over their response.

One wrote: 'This is not how you do funny Twitter responses.. This is how you look creepy, and lose commuters.'

Another added: 'A nice early example of how not to do customer service on Twitter in 2018.'

But others insisted it was fine to call people using 'regional' terms, and accused those complaining of 'faux outrage'.

One railway account responded: 'A lot of people like a bit of personality. It’d be a shame if people had their regional dialects "trained" out of them.'

One person wrote: 'How did we ever end up in a place people get so upset and offended by anything and everything?'

Another Twitter user said: 'It's not misogynistic/sexist. The word "honey" is not gender specific, whether saying it or hearing it.'