Welcome to Nowhere

Surprisingly enough, it’s not to do with accessibility. It may or may not have anything to do specificly with customer service. But it’s largely to do with their technological issues, of which they have a shitload. One that’s been hanging around on the long term since at the very least my first attempt at getting myself from here to there is their decided inability to do, like, anything while using the Canadian version of their website. Specificly, when it comes to purchasing tickets. Up until my second attempt to do so, they decided it would be real fun to show me exactly how very broken their purchasing system actually was. Only at that point, it was broken from both my end and theirs. For example, you could see half of your trip (the half *leaving* the Ottawa terminal), but you couldn’t see the return. But, if you went to the US version of same company’s website, you could easily see both sides of your round trip. You just couldn’t pay for them with a Canadian creditcard.

I was under the mistaken impression earlier this afternoon that such malfunctions had been corrected. I could schedule both ends of the round trip, and could even go so far as to see how much such a trip would cost me. I didn’t want to try purchasing it at that point, though, since Jessica (samari76) didn’t yet know what she could take off from work. Well, we found out today she does in fact have at least some of the time I’ll be there off from work, so I thought I’d go ahead and pay for the ticket. Not quite.

As said, I could schedule the trip, I could see how much it cost me, and it even gave me their little disclaimer about how tickets won’t be honoured for anything other than the date they were purchased for without a $15 admin fee to change said date. I gave ’em my creditcard number, and it all appeared to be halfway decent. Until I went to actually submit the purchase. Then their ever so helpful “we encountered a problem and your purchase could not be completed” error message came up. Well crap on a goddamn cracker. I thought we had this conversation already, Greyhound. Honestly.

I called their local office, thinking maybe I could bypass the online system altogether and go through that way. Way to oversimplify things, James. They tell me to either call their main line, or take a run into the station and pick it up that way. By this point, my usually not hard to piss off self was getting just a tiny bit pissed off. I decided, since I was here, to go ahead and call the main number… worst they could say was no, right? Wrong. Instead, they blamed my creditcard for not being able to purchase the ticket, saying they didn’t get the authorization from said card. Say fucking what now? After dumping copious amounts of my tax time earned money on my card, it’s *still* declined? I don’t fucking think so.

I called up Visa, and by this point I’m about ready to tear someone a new asshole. Twice. They tell me the charge *did* go through, and there’s an authorization code here to back that up. So now it’s on. Somebody’s blowing smoke up my ass, and I have a sneaking suspicion (no idea where it came from) that it’s a Greyhound Canada employee. I called their customer service number, and pretty much got another clueless wonder. This one, at least, had the brains to confirm they hadn’t even processed my ticket order. She told me the charges I was told were there should be cleared inside of 24 hours. I’ll believe that when I see it. In the meantime, I still have no bus ticket, and may or may not have been charged for one. Sorry, greyhound. You just screwed up huge.

I thought about just saying fuck it and flying to Rochester. Only one problem. West Jet doesn’t fly there, and Air Canada wants upwards of $500 minimum to fly there. I’ll say this much though. If Greyhound can’t get its shit together and soon, I’m halfway tempted to pony up the extra cashola and book a flight. It might be more expensive, but at least I’ll get there without needing to drop kick half a dozen people first.

Update: I have a ride to the station on Friday. Here’s hoping I actually get to come back with a bus ticket.