Last year my bus for the airport did not turn up and I forked out over £50 for a taxi. The taxi firm told me this is common, easy bus leave passengers in the lurch - no customer contact number. They just take your money.
I am making a complaint for another reason, because the last time I used their service, the bus broke down on the motorway.
I believe their vehicles are not being checked and staff not trained to deal with breakdowns.
I sent a complaint letter to them (recorded post) and received no reply.
I purchased a ticket for 23/02/2014 departing London Stansted to Baker Street. I boarded the 8.20pm bus with vehicle registration number LXI2 BFY and it broke down at 8.38pm.
The driver did not seem trained to deal with a situation like this. The rear offside (right) tyre exploded and we found ourselves on the hard shoulder of the M11. The driver made a phone call and five minutes later asked us to depart the bus. It is highly risky to leave passengers in a vehicle like this.
We were waiting outside in the cold and were promised that a replacement bus would show in half an hour. The driver did not have access to a spare tyre and even worse, the vehicle did not contain a warning triangle and one reflective (fluorescent) safety jacket. As per the highway code, you must put a warning triangle on the road at least 45 metres (147 feet) behind your broken-down vehicle on the same side of the road, or use other permitted warning devices if you have them. This was not done!
I question the frequency of vehicle checks by EasyBus. A tyre blowing out at speed is a scary event and reasons into the explosion should be looked into. It is understandable if the cause was unavoidable, however I do question whether the tyres are routinely checked and replaced.
To add salt to the wound, the driver failed to update passengers about the replacement bus. He himself did not know when the bus would actually arrive regardless of making phone calls. The bus finally arrived at 9.48pm (after 1 hour and 10 minutes). When this happened, there was a sense of panic and lack of order. Passengers were not sure about whether they had to move their own bags onto the replacement vehicle. We started doing this and my bag was left at the back of the vehicle with two other bags. If I had not requested your driver to retrieve this, it surely would have been left behind.
I am thankful that there were no small children or elderly passengers on this journey. As a healthy and young woman, I found it difficult to stand outside in the cold for such a long period of time. Consequently, I became unwell, had a terrible ongoing journey as missed my connections from Baker Street and had no mobile battery left to contact family. read more
