I Gave Up on this Service...
When I first moved to the area I found East Bay Shuttle and was thrilled to have found a "Mom and Pop" alternative to Shuttle Express. I liked having an individual driver who would take me individually home or to the airport and found them overall quite consistent.
I was also impressed that this operation is run by Bulgarian immigrants who are very hard working and wanted to support it.
However, over time I found the quality diminished, an absence of loyalty to long time customers, and some increasing disfunctionality --particularly concerning being picked up following a flight. They don't call you (or stopped calling you) when you arrive at the Airport, and if you don't have their number handy it's hard to get (since you get East Bay Connection when you call directory assistance --an outfit to definitely be avoided-- and they aren't listed among the regular carriers at Oakland Airport). So there were times I was left without my confirmed return trip driver arriving and finding myself waiting at the airport and needing to find alternative transport home. Or, succeeding in calling the business and waiting and waiting and waiting for the driver to arrive from wherever he is off site.
The language barrier also became a major problem: the drivers often speak minimal English and I found them taking inconsistent routes as they were learning the landscape (including one hair raising experience driving through much of Oakland by the driver in the pouring rain who was having trouble finding his way to Walnut Creek. My blood pressure rose throughout the experience besides the fact that it required about 20 unnecessary additional minutes to get home).
The vans are mechanically poorly maintained; you are disconcerted by flashing check engine lights and occasionally the drivers have complained about the owners' efforts to keep costs down with inadequate maintenance. Don't know about you but I sure as hell don't want to get stranded on I-880 in Oakland in the middle of the night. Driving in a van with a long crack along the windshield imagining that any bump on the highway (quite likely on 880) is going to cause it to shatter is also "disconcerting".
I tried directing business traffic to them and initially found that they had a can do attitude. Then it became a can't do attitude with occasional failures to show up (the language barrier being an operative problem) and the customer (us) being blamed in a curt discourteous fashion.
Also, invest in credit card technology already: there were too many times that my credit card was rubbed across paper slips with envelopes, and then when the driver was required to use his mobile phone with the options random: Iphone, Android, Windows phone, with you being required to figure out the new keyboard on the spot in the airport with other drivers impatiently wanting your butt out of the way. And then, the promised emailed receipt never arrived inviting a nightmare call with resulting language challenges to attempt to get a receipt.
There was the time the woman who is co-owner picked me up and she expected me to carry my bags out and to put them into the van and then to lift them out when we arrived. This isn't about chivalry when you are paying for a service so don't play the female card thank you.
The final straw for me was when I found that after a few years of using them (and they aren't cheap) and always tipping generously, that if I called a week in advance that no they were overbooked and couldn't pick me up at the requested time, suggesting unrealistic alternatives like leaving my house at 5 a.m. for an 8 a.m. flight because no drivers were available at 6 a.m. I switched to the more expensive Walnut Creek Airport Service which provides sterling service. While I loathe East Bay Connection, quite frankly I suspect that operation is more reliable. I stopped using East Bay Shuttle two years ago having surrendered with disappointment and a tad of disgust. read more
