My fiancée and I wanted to treat our wedding guests to a trip to 3 wineries in Napa a couple days before our wedding in July, so 75 of us piled into 2 buses - a 56-passenger bus from San Jose Charter and a smaller bus from A Cut Above Limo.
First off, we paid the same for both buses, which makes A Cut Above a rip off.
I got in the smaller bus and at first the blacked out windows, dim lights, and stripper pole in the middle made it seem like it would be a lot of fun. It was anything but. We started driving and we saw a huge crack in the ceiling where the stripper pole was bolted. It looked like it would fall on someone soon.
As we got rolling someone plugged in an ipod and the driver started jamming the music. It sounded terrible. The bass speakers made one continuous sound and we couldn't hear anything. We tried other ipods and cell phones and it all sounded bad. The speaker must have been broken. Then the driver played the only DVD he had available - a rap video from 2004 that I never heard of. The sound was still terrible, and the TV was blurry. I'm starting to see the picture of low quality equipment for a low quality experience from a low quality company.
We turned the music off because we couldn't tolerate it anymore and rode in silence up to Napa. In the first 30 minutes the driver pulls off the highway. The entire bus was filling with the smell of mechanical burning. The driver fidgeted with the hood but didn't actually opening it. He had no clue how to open it. I would expect a bus driver to know how to open the hood of the bus, but I guess that A Cut Above Limo doesn't bother making sure drivers know how to do that. My brother got out there and opened it for him. By now the smell had gone away, and nothing seemed wrong with the engine, so we piled in and continued up to Napa.
10 minutes later that smell of burning was getting worse again and we pulled over at some gas station in downtown Oakland. The driver called his boss, this Matt Kelly, and explained the situation. Matt said he would have another bus at our location in 20 minutes. 2 hours later we're still in downtown Oakland and the bus driver is still giving directions and addresses to Matt Kelly, who's still relaying them to the other bus driver. This was a perfect demonstration of complete incompetency. Matt Kelly simply has no idea how to manage his buses or his drivers.
Meanwhile, our other bus from San Jose Charter is up at the first winery already. The bus driver for that company had no issues getting there and didn't need any directions at all, which you would expect from a bus company. But when you're working with A Cut Above Limo and Matt Kelly, you have to learn to expect a decreased level of competence. After the 2 hours in Oakland, we finally got going in a new bus that seemed to work - though it looked and smelled unclean and made all of us feel uncomfortable - and we finally got up into Napa. From there, the driver (same as the original driver) had no idea where we were going. He didn't know the address, location, or winery name. It was lucky that my fiancée and I were on that bus and not on the larger bus because we knew how to get to the winery. It seems like such basic knowledge for a professional bus company, but then again A Cut Above isn't exactly professional - though they're priced like professionals.
The rest of the day went without incident, except for me having to give our bus driver directions the whole time. Matt Kelly assured us that he would refund a chunk of the $1000 we paid him. Predictably, we got no refund. I called him a couple weeks later to remind him, and he said check was in the mail, even though it wasn't. Who treats their customers like crap then lies to them? Matt Kelly at A Cut Above Limo does, that's who. I think you can tell he's not my favorite person. Actually I think he's a fraud looking for people to take advantage of.
Looking back a few months later, I feel bad for Matt Kelly. From the condition of his bus I could tell he's a struggling business man. He thinks he's a party enabler with his buses, but he's not. He's more the creepy old guy that feeds off of homecoming and prom events, trying to get as much money as possible out of high school kids while giving them the worst service possible. If we didn't have so many guests who wanted to visit Napa, I would never even know about A Cut Above Limo, but we were in a jam and needed a bus and driver, and went with the only company in town that had a bus available on short notice - undoubtedly because they have a hard time getting customers.
If you feel like being a charity and paying a lot for a crappy experience then by all means call Matt Kelly at A Cut Above Limo. Otherwise, there are dozens of better bus companies out there to call. Pick any of them and you're guaranteed to have a better experience. read more