So I'm very slowly getting up to speed but I figured, rather than taint the loveliness of my travels, Greyhound can have it's own post, just for a rant. Also I haven't yet got around to writing my complaint, mostly because you don't seem to be able to do it via e-mail and I feel the company is worth neither a stamp nor a phone call.
We got ourselves up bright and early on Wednesday to make sure we were at the station at least an hour before the bus left, which considering the debacle on the way here seemed a great idea. It possibly was, but we had a slightly grotty breakfast at the grim bus station and a whole hour waiting in a queue of 4 people (yes we were half that queue).
The bus actually left on time. 3 minutes early in fact. Somewhere along the route we lost those 3 minutes and a further 55. The unscheduled pizza stop probably had a fair bit to do with it. I was blissfully unaware of this until the last stop before the border brought us a whole host of grumbling passengers. Then I started to be a bit anxious. Nicole and I , when booking our bus tickets, had in fact only left 35 minutes between buses.
Then we stopped for a toilet break (there was a flipping toilet on the bus??) and duty-free. Definitely not on the agenda. Worried about the time, I found 2 men dressed in greyhound uniforms but who weren't the driver. I asked them if they were officials on the journey and they happily said I could ask them questions. I asked why we were so late. The response was pretty snooty and rude. They told me we weren't but were completely on schedule. They said that if anything would make us late it would be customs. I didn't quite believe them since it had taken 45 minutes to get from Montreal to the border at night and we had 50 to reach customs, go through and then crawl through Montreal's rush hour traffic.
Customs took a grand total of 10 minutes. (I probably didn't help by leaving my travel documents on the desk and wandering off causing a the customs officer to chase after me.) Therefore customs did not delay us.
We set off with 25 minutes to be on time.
Not wanting to disturb the driver, I went to ask one of the men in uniforms if they had ID numbers. He got all defensive and had a bit of a go at me saying he had nothing to do with this journey, calling me "lady" and being plain rude. I told him I didn't think he was being very polite to which his response was "yeah maybe am bein' a liddle loud witcha" - loud? the whole bus could hear! He kept telling me that it wasn't his responsibility blah blah blah. He didn't take very kindly to me pointing out that whether he is on duty or not whilst wearing his uniform he is still a representative of his company thus he should not be speaking to a passenger in such a rude way. Nicole couldn't believe the way he'd spoken to me either. Sucks to be him because he was wearing a name badge. Named and shamed Eduardo Lopez, named and shamed.
Our 35 minutes of overlap were slipping away as we crawled through traffic. By some absolute miracle, Hannah and Victoria had convinced the next bus driver to wait for us. They texted me for regular updates as to our location, which became more and more frustrating the closer we got to the bus station but the slower we went. I actually contemplated getting off the bus and running instead. We pulled into the station more than an hour late, grabbed our bags and literally ran to get on our next bus. I wanted to hug the driver but he might not have appreciated it - hugs from a random stranger, well it's not everyone's cup of tea now is it?
So, if you want a bus that will be on time? Don't pick Greyhound. If you want staff who are polite and helpful? DEFINITELY , whatever you do, do NOT choose greyhound.
If you want a bus that will wait for you when running late and then proceed to make up the lost time and arrive 5 minutes early? Pick Megabus. It's also far cheaper.
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