BEWARE! THEY ARRIVE 35 MINUTES LATE AND WON'T ANSWER THEIR PHONES!
We booked Austin Charter Services through Abdul for 2 buses from the Westin at the Domain to the Barr Mansion for our wedding guests, about 80 people. The contract was set at 5:30pm on Saturday and Abdul assured us the bus would arrive from 5 to 5:15pm just to be sure it would be on time.
A few days later we called Abdul to change the time to 5:15pm and he said no problem. We wanted to make sure the buses arrived early or on time and the wedding could start without any delay from traffic or anything else.
Wedding day came and not one thing went wrong except the BUSES!! Not only did they not arrive at 5:15pm, but they didn't show up at 530 either! They didn't pick up our guests until 5:50pm, 20 minutes after our contract time and 35 minutes after our verbal agreed change time. So as a non-frantic bride I calmly called Abdul at 5:35pm on my wedding day asking him why the buses hadn't arrived and he said our contract was for 5:30pm...I said what about the 5:15pm change we agreed on? He said the contract states 5:30pm....okay well its 5:35 and no drivers are there....so you promised they would get there early regardless and they are no where to be found. Abdul then hung up on me... just wow. I called back with no answer. Being a planner, I had gotten both bus driver's phone numbers previously so I called both of the drivers. No answer from EITHER of them. I was shocked that not only did I not get an explanation or apology, but he actually hung up on me.
We had to delay the entire wedding because most of our guests were not there yet. Due to the bus delay - we missed our entire cocktail hour with our guests since the rest of the wedding timeline was screwed up.
DO NOT USE AUSTIN CHARTER SERVICES!!!!!!!!! We did not receive an apology, a refund, or any kind of discount even though the fault was completely on them. Our wedding was still beautiful, but of all things you don't want to worry about your guests arriving on time. This is the ONLY vendor from my wedding that did not deliver (look at my other reviews) everyone else got 5 stars.
For the record - here is their response to my Yelp review: "Its sad what happened on that day but it was beyond control and we are really sorry about upsetting the customer. There was a major accident with lots of traffic and many events were taking place in Austin in April. As everyone knows Austin has become top 5 in the nation for worse traffic. The guest got picked up as I had to get to the bus drivers to see where they were and had to cut the phone conversation short . In the airline industry flights get delayed for hours and passengers get stranded in the airport. However, that is not our goal to be late . Our priority is to ensure that you are comfortable, relaxed and on time. Therefore, we have set a policy and insist that folks transfer their guest 30 minutes before the scheduled time of the ceremony to prevent such an event from happening. We do several weddings a week and if we were that awful I assure you that our review would be nasty."
So in closing - they may be late because Austin has lots of traffic. I hope that reinforces the issue here. A bus company should know the traffic in the area and PLAN for it by being EARLY. There was really only one job here - arrive on time and take the guests to the venue ON TIME. So if you don't care about the time frame, then the service was fine. read more