“They seem to have no compassion”

Air travelers seem to delight in poking fun of people who ride the bus, but as someone who has driven coast-to-coast on Greyhound a time or two, I can tell you it was safe, efficient and inexpensive. Oh, and really long.

Not everyone has the same experience. Take Russ Judson, who bought a 21-day advance purchase e-ticket on Greyhound to drive from Minneapolis to Nashville to visit his daughter, who is sick. (That’s a 14-hour drive, in case you were wondering.) Along the way, Greyhound made a promise that it had no intention of keeping, according to Judson.

I studiously read the fine print on the Greyhound Web site before purchasing, which stated that you can take a later bus than the time listed on the ticket as long as you pay a $15 exchange fee.

Just in case, I placed an email (the day before I purchased the tickets) to their customer support team. She (Linda H.) told me that was the case, that I could take a later bus with a $15 per ticket charge.

Judson showed me the e-mail. And sure enough, it showed he could make the change.

But when I talked to them this week they are telling me that the tickets MUST be used by January 24, because they are e-tickets (they are saying these cannot be changed).

I tried to get them to change the tickets, but they refuse to do so. I was told “we apologize for the inconvenience”.

An inconvenience? $250 worth of tickets that I can’t use based on a technicality, when a representative from Greyhound specifically told me in an email that this was fine to do? This is a very important trip, my daughter is going for treatment for anorexia and could die without us making this trip. I made them aware of that. They seem to have no compassion.

Greyhound doesn’t publish a ticket contract, the way airlines do, but it lists the various types of fares on its Web site. As I review the correspondence between Greyhound and Judson, I think this came down to an honest misunderstanding.

I contacted Greyhound on his behalf. A few days later, I heard back from Judson.

I just spoke with a Greyhound representative, and she said I was given misinformation by the Web support team, and that I will be able to use the e-tickets after I pay the $15 fee for travel on the same route after the date on the tickets. She also told me that if I encounter any problems at the counter (but she does not expect any), to give her a call. Thank you very much for intervening on my behalf. You the man!

Greyhound did the right thing by fixing Judson’s ticket, but it shouldn’t have taken my intervention for it to acknowledge its mistake.

(Photo: heliosphan/Flickr Creative Commons)

  • Toni

    From MSP to BNA, couldn’t you fly almost as cheaply and in a fraction of the time?

  • Techstar

    Is that germane to the blog post? I don’t think so.

  • Mike

    It is sad that Greyhound doesn’t even know its own policies. I am wondering if this complaint was escalated to a manager or anywhere else besides the one person on the web support team?

    Also, I understand trying to get a special fare on an airline because of a death, but this being Greyhound and seeing the people in my city at the terminals, I wonder how often they are asked for special requests for reduced fairs because so and so is in the hospital or going to die. Not saying this to be callous, but there are times in which throwing out your personal situation might not work to your advantage.

    Also, this was written- “This is a very important trip, my daughter is going for treatment for anorexia and could die without us making this trip.” What I really don’t understand is that the daughter is already there. Why cant she get treatment without her dad being there? And if the situation is really that dire, why in the world would you rebook to a LATER travel date?? None of that should matter when it comes to the company policy, but given the extremely nature of the travel, one would have to wonder why a change would be necessary?

  • Thalassa

    @Toni, maybe the OP has a fear of flying.

    I’m not sure about something else though. If his daughter is so ill that she could die if they don’t make this trip, how did he have the foreknowledge to buy 21 day in advance purchase tickets?

    At any rate, I’m glad Greyhound obeyed their own rules and straightened this out!

  • Chicky

    @Toni: Not really. I did some quick checking. A 21-day advance purchase airline ticket (just checked Orbitz) was in the $235 range, per person. A 21-day advance purchase Greyhound ticket was $70 per person. So that’s quite a difference.
    Chris, I’m glad you were able to work this out for this family. Hopefully, the daughter will get the treatment she needs and will make a full recovery.

  • BucksterSF

    What’s with the companies having to give discounts because your family has an emergency or death. If I walked into your auto tire shop and said I need half price on a set of tires because my mom died and I have to drive to the funeral and my tires are shot? Or into your cafe and said I’m in town for a funeral can youi give me a free meal? Or any business? Life has tragedies, why is it always up to someone else to subsidize it?

  • Carrie Charney

    I don’t see that there was any special request because his daughter was sick. I see this merely as a request to honor what was told to him by the company. Also, I took it to mean that his daughter was due to start some kind of treatment. If the treatment was delayed, he would have to delay his trip. We don’t know all the facts, but all that was needed was for Greyhound to honor their own rules.

  • Lianne

    @Buckstar

    No one’s saying that a company *has* to give a discount due to tragedy, but many travel companies do. Unlike a tire, which generally has a static price, airline/bus fares can be highly dynamic. This is because their very complicated pricing structures are designed to “reward” people who purchase early with discounts and “punish” (though that’s not really the best word) people who wait until the last minute. Of course this is a gross oversimplification of their revenue management models, but that’s the easiest way of putting it. They basically are providing an incentive for people to plan ahead so they can maximize revenues.

    Travel companies offer emergency/bereavement fares because they understand that this model penalizes people who through no fault of their own MUST book at the last minute as one can rarely plan to the day for the death of a loved one. It’s part of a very legitimate corporate model that fosters goodwill.

    Back on subject…the most important part of this story is that an employee of Greyhound gave the customer incorrect information. They made their customer a promise and they needed to keep it.

  • JS

    Nice job on helping him out, Chris.

  • Craig

    BucksterSF: maybe you haven’t had the experience of death in your family yet, but here is the reality. Burials are usually held within 3 days of death. Living 1300 miles away, it takes one long day (21 hours) of driving or 2 normal 11 hour days with a hotel stop and accomanying meals. Buying airline tickets for a family of four on the day of travel can cost a lot (in my case, almost $350/per person.) If I had the foresight of death, I could have purchased 14 day, advance tickets for about $160/per person. What most people want in a discount is to pay about the same price of the advance ticket, since it was an unexpected event and no pre-planning was possible. Most airlines (at that time) were not in a position to offer a good discount. Your other examples (food, tires, etc.) don’t seem to fit into the same category as air travel.

  • http://rjtalestold.blogspot.com/ Dick Jordan

    Chris,

    How much of your time do you devote to these “Sorry, we know we promised you (fill in the blank) and it’s entirely our fault, but you have to pay extra or fight us for a refund unless you can get Chris Elliott to force us to do the right thing” problems? What happened to “The Customer is Always Right” philosophy of doing business?

  • Christopher Elliott

    @Dick Jordan, it seems like that’s all I write about these days. The customer seems to never be right.

  • Thalassa

    @Chicky – if that’s the case, why would the OP say he had $250 worth of tickets?

  • Tom

    It’s too bad bus travel has such a bad rep in this country. It is by far the most fuel efficient way to travel — much more so than trains, planes or automobiles. In some countries, buses are perfectly acceptable and carry no stigma, but in this country, nobody would mention a cross country bus trip in polite company.

  • Scott

    The problem with “The Customer is Always Right” philosophy is that in this day of entitlement, many customers have interpreted this to mean that they should get whatever they want, whenever they want, at whatever cost, and have any exception made for them in the name of “customer service.” And if they don’t get it, then the person across the counter attempting to do their job is considered rude. Furthermore, the more you do for someone like this, they more they want and expect. Many customers are no longer reasonable in their understanding and expectation, and what was once an admirable service goal has been corrupted by the very people it was supposed to be working for. Sad.

  • Carver

    @Tom

    LOL. The reason that no one would mention using a bus for cross country travel is that it takes too long. Just for grins I checked San Francisco to Miami. Its a THREE DAY JOURNEY. Each way. The cheapest RT fare was $389. That’s more than most airlines charge.

  • Jim J

    My friends Joe and Martha live in Tampa. Their daughter lives in Memphis, about 1000 miles away. The daughter was expecting a baby – Joe and Martha’ first grandchild and they wanted to be with their daughter and child right after the baby was born. In most cases, it is impossible to know exactly when a baby will arrive. Advance puchase tickets air tickets could not be used. The least expensive round trip walk-up fare was over $2,000 for two people. Even though they could afford it, my friends did not want to spend that much money. Since there is not train service between the two cities, the only transportation alternative was Greyhound. Each one way trip was scheduled to take about 22 hours compared to less than 3 hours by plane. The difference in price was significant. $2000 for two air tickets vs. $250 for two non-refundable, non-changeable bus tickets with no advance purchase required. They decided that the savings of $1750 justified the extra time spend using bus transportation. They also pointed out to me that they didn’t have to arrive at the bus terminal two hours before departure time to go through a TSA inspection. They did not have to take their shoes off or walk through a metal detector. They could pack anything in their checked or carry-on bags and nobody would tell them that liquids need to be in three ounce containers and that all these containers need to fit into a one quart plastic bag.

    When they returned, Joe and Martha told me that the trip in both directions was comfortable and uneventful. They also told me that while in Memphis, they used the $1750 saved on travel to start a bank account for their grandson.

  • EricR

    @Tom: According to the article linked below, the most fuel-efficient methods of transportation are – in order – Motorcycles, Trains, Airplanes, Buses, and Cars.

    http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2917/is-mass-transit-a-waste-of-energy

  • http://www.twc.ca Stephen Pickford

    Greyhound eventually gets their customer service act together, but there is a lack of connection between their website and reality in many instances. I had a friend staying in Montreal who wanted to get back to Indianapolis. The website quoted a specific fare, but one could not purchase it on the web, it said, because it was multi-leg and involved a joint operation with Coach Canada. Went to the local agent, he couldn’t sell it, because “it involves Greyhound”. Went 20 miles to the downtown terminal, agent look bewildered…and then said the only fare that applied was almost $100 more than what the web quoted, even though I had the print out with me. The local Greyhound supervisor looked at it, and basically laughed in my face. I didn’t bother to contact Greyhound customer relations, but took it up directly with their parent company, First America, at their Cincinnati HQ, and the matter was settled quickly. But just shows that there is a performance distance between what they advertise and what gets done at time of delivery, but that, eventually, they will do the right thing…perhaps a legacy of how the company has changed hands so often over the years (Armour-Dial, Laidlaw, First America), so there has been a lack of standardized corporate vision.

  • kinsast

    EricR, your conclusion of the linked article are seriously flawed. Talking about it, the article in itself is seriously flawed and confusing.
    Motorcycles, hell, which motorcycles, they care not to define that. Buses? anybody doubting that a half ways modern bus with 40 passengers will be way more fuel-efficient than a car! Besides, what kind of car. There are so many variables not defined or mentioned that the whole article is straightdopedly stupid.

  • Cheryl

    I think that with the right phone call, compassion will assist people in their emergency travel…you just need to know who to ask. My mother came down with encephalitis while on vacation in Montana, I live in New England. She was not expected to live and the airline was gracious enough to let my brother and I on flights with the reduced tickets that as they pointed out “are reserved for the family of the deceased.”

  • BucksterSF

    @Craig,Lianne,

    I’m not saying tires etc are the same as a death, but transportation companies are in business just like tire companies. Both my parents live in another state and both are deceased and I’ve had to pay top dollar to travel for each event. What I am saying is this happens to to every person in America that has parents, which is almost much everyone. Tragedy happens to everyone – its not the company’s responsibility to subsidize that. If they want to for goodwill or some other aspect that’s fine, but my point was to expect it is wrong.