Greyhound Stuns!

The ride to Toronto was long... freaking long... Before we even reached Toronto, I was stunned by greyhound (this should be the first in many that is coming up). The queue was long so May & I decided to make use of the automated kiosk which has no queue. Thinking that we were IT-savvy enough to skip the queue by making use of the automated kiosk, we were quite satisfied with ourselves. But ALAS! As the machine proceeded towards the printing of our ticket, the machine HUNG!!! We then asked the operator for help and all she did was to take our credit card and try it on another machine and told us that our credit card did not work! What the Hell! It worked! it was working but the machine basically just hung during the printing stage! She just told us to wait (albeit in a totally disinterested tone) and walked away. I tried to seek help by queuing in the main queue again. After 20mins of queueing, the machine suddenly dispensed our Philly to Toronto tickets! Trust me this would turn out to be a disastrous result in the end. (see behind when i talk about the trip from Atlantic City to DC.

To travel from Philly to Toronto, the greyhound will bring you to NYC first before going to Toronto. the 2nd stun came from the bus operator from the first leg of the trip from NYC to Toronto. We were in the queue preparing to board the bus. As we were one of the last few, I was in doubt as to whether we were to board the initial bus or the next bus. So when the bus driver took our tickets (at the bus stand), i asked him which bus he was referring to. He just growled at me and said "go!". Just in case it was my bad english, i asked again. He once again growled and me and said "go! just use some common sense and you'll know!". WTF...

Let's fast forward to the part when we wanted to leave Atlantic City for DC (that's like 5 days forward). We went to the bus terminal to collect our tickets. Guess what? The operator told us that our itinerary is disconnected and we need to call a 1800 number. Since its toll-free, we called. The operator told us that we need to cancel the booking (and get a 100% refund) and book it again (i.e. i needed cash flow of 2 x the fare). Forgetting about that, We adopted the option. When the operator asked for our credit card information, she said the credit card has to be registered in US. What kinda shit policy is that? So i decided to call it off and just cancel the ticket. At most i'll just go to the terminal to purchase a new ticket. They stun me for the 4th time this trip.

They told me that if i were to cancel the ticket without rebooking, they can only refund me 80% of the bill. Another shit policy. I had enough. I just said ok and asked her to refund me my 80% of the bill. That caused us to lose 20% x 72 bucks, about US$14.40. Sianz... Fortunately, we save some money by taking an alternative transport to DC. We took a US$13.25 NJ transit to Philly and took a China Town Bus at US$14 to DC. the total cost per pax was US$27.25 instead of US$34. As such, we saved US$6.75 per pax + US$4 will-call cost by greyhound. So in the end, we saved about a buck...

I would like to also point out that during the trip to Toronto, we were driven by different bus drivers. 1 from Canada (the route from Buffalo to Toronto or Toronto to Buffalo) and the rest from US. The Canadian Bus operators were MUCH MORE courteous than the US ones... think about this...

here's my recommendation, take the Chinatown Bus if you can...