Greyhound to go to reserved tickets effective 11/1/12

[calwatch]

This was forwarded to me by a friend who is a Greyhound agent in his small town. Remember that Greyhound used to be open ticketing, meaning that you could board any schedule for the given day, and often board on the wrong day. Amtrak used to be similar on the corridors until they started reserving tickets, but even then until implementation of e-Ticketing, verification of train number and dates were inconsistent (now the scanner will beep if it is the wrong date or train).

Good Afternoon Agents,

Attached are TRIPS/MAX instructions on how to book seats for passengers with a wheelchair. Since we are moving towards planned capacity it will be essential to book these seats this way. Below is an announcement which will give you more background on planned capacity, which is why you have to book these extra tickets.

Also, be sure when you book a child's ticket you only use the C5 box. The C2 box should only be used for the seat slide tickets.

Effective November 1, 2012, Greyhound will move to a planned capacity system that will allow us to have better control creating extra sections or planned set-in schedules.

This new system will be similar to what customers currently experience when traveling on Greyhound Express. Therefore, customers will no longer be able to walk up and use an outdated ticket to travel. It will be extremely important for drivers and ticket agents to ensure customers are on the correct schedule and on the correct date of travel that is showing on their ticket. If we discover a customer is trying to travel with the incorrect travel information, we must reissue their ticket with the applicable change fees.

Additionally, any customer traveling with a ticket that does not interface with our Greyhound ticketing system will have to be reissued a ticket through our system.

If you have any questions regarding this change, please talk with your Area Manager.

Also if you have any problems opening the attached document please let us or your Area Manager know.

Thank you for your attention.

 

[Amtrak Cajun]

Well, I will say this, it will be a better way of managing capacity on their buses, but its still Greyhound and they will still book the bus solid, making for one heck of an uncomfortable trip.

On the more negative side, this will lead to more fees being charged when they have to reissue tickets due to missed connections and weather related incidents. Unless they will still be rebooking passengers at no expense when those situations arise. Only time will tell though.

 

[the_traveler]

[Moderator note - The thread's title was edited to reflect the date of the change]

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

BTW, what's the booking fee that's charged when you book online? Just taxes or what?

 

[guest]

Greyhound Express has always been reserved. I've seen drivers turn people away who had wrong date/time tickets, and I've seen drivers and gate agents allow passengers with same date/different time tickets board buses on standby.

Greyhound offered fee-waived reissues in the northeast if a passenger's trip had been cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy.

For the past couple of months, Greyhound buses Richmond-Washington-New York have been less than half filled. A very comfortable ride: your own seat pair, extra leg room

Megabuses Washington-New York -- very crowded.

Greyhound buses, at least in the northeast, are not as crowded as they used to be. Nor are the stations.

 

[the_traveler]

Greyhound buses, at least in the northeast, are not as crowded as they used to be. Nor are the stations.

thats because people got smart and started taking Amtrak!

 

[Nathanael]

The good side of this is that people will now be guaranteed a seat.

Unfortunately, this reserved ticket policy only applies to Greyhound proper. The buses which really need guaranteed seats and don't have 'em are mostly independent partners with joint ticketing.

 

[Amtrak Cajun]

The buses may not be crowded in the Northeast because they have more frequent scheduling between major cities there. Come down south and board a GLI bus and see the difference. Also, you have Peter Pan, Megabus, and so on, so you can spread out the passenger load a bit easier.

Dave, its funny you should say that, because once I discovered Amtrak, and how much more comfortable it was, I pretty much ditched GLI except for short runs, The longest bus ride Ive taken lately was the 4 hour trip from New Orleans back to Lafayette. *SL wasnt running so I had no choice" Also, Greyhound has now moved into our local city bus/Amtrak facility, thereby making transfers between all 3 easier. Before, you had to walk about a block to get to the bus station.

I dont think the ticket change is going to be that big of a deal, it just means that you can only travel on the date/time that your ticket states. Most passengers adhere to that anyway.

 

[fairviewroad]

BTW, what's the booking fee that's charged when you book online? Just taxes or what?

I don't think this is a new fee, but Greyhound charges a $1.50 "service charge" when you book online. It's not a tax, it's simply

a "charge it because we can" fee. If you buy your ticket in person at a Greyhound station, or if you choose the "pay with cash"

option and pick up the ticket at a 7/11, you can avoid the fee. So the brick-and-mortar option, counterintuitively, costs less.

In the airline world, bottom-scrapers Spirit and Allegiant also use this method of charging people an extra fee for the "convenience"

of buying tickets online when they very well know that if everybody bought directly from an agent, their ticket counters would be

overwhelmed.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

BTW, what's the booking fee that's charged when you book online? Just taxes or what?

I don't think this is a new fee, but Greyhound charges a $1.50 "service charge" when you book online. It's not a tax, it's simply

a "charge it because we can" fee. If you buy your ticket in person at a Greyhound station, or if you choose the "pay with cash"

option and pick up the ticket at a 7/11, you can avoid the fee. So the brick-and-mortar option, counterintuitively, costs less.

In the airline world, bottom-scrapers Spirit and Allegiant also use this method of charging people an extra fee for the "convenience"

of buying tickets online when they very well know that if everybody bought directly from an agent, their ticket counters would be

overwhelmed.

Now I Iunderstand why Greyhound always pops up that huge "PAY WITH CASH" ad when you search for tickets!

 

[Anderson]

The buses may not be crowded in the Northeast because they have more frequent scheduling between major cities there. Come down south and board a GLI bus and see the difference. Also, you have Peter Pan, Megabus, and so on, so you can spread out the passenger load a bit easier.

Dave, its funny you should say that, because once I discovered Amtrak, and how much more comfortable it was, I pretty much ditched GLI except for short runs, The longest bus ride Ive taken lately was the 4 hour trip from New Orleans back to Lafayette. *SL wasnt running so I had no choice" Also, Greyhound has now moved into our local city bus/Amtrak facility, thereby making transfers between all 3 easier. Before, you had to walk about a block to get to the bus station.

I dont think the ticket change is going to be that big of a deal, it just means that you can only travel on the date/time that your ticket states. Most passengers adhere to that anyway.

If anything, I think it'll be an improvement, since I've heard stories of people showing up at "their" bus (i.e. the date/time on their ticket) and being unable to board because there are more people there on what amount to unreserved tickets than there are seats available.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

The buses may not be crowded in the Northeast because they have more frequent scheduling between major cities there. Come down south and board a GLI bus and see the difference. Also, you have Peter Pan, Megabus, and so on, so you can spread out the passenger load a bit easier.

Dave, its funny you should say that, because once I discovered Amtrak, and how much more comfortable it was, I pretty much ditched GLI except for short runs, The longest bus ride Ive taken lately was the 4 hour trip from New Orleans back to Lafayette. *SL wasnt running so I had no choice" Also, Greyhound has now moved into our local city bus/Amtrak facility, thereby making transfers between all 3 easier. Before, you had to walk about a block to get to the bus station.

I dont think the ticket change is going to be that big of a deal, it just means that you can only travel on the date/time that your ticket states. Most passengers adhere to that anyway.

If anything, I think it'll be an improvement, since I've heard stories of people showing up at "their" bus (i.e. the date/time on their ticket) and being unable to board because there are more people there on what amount to unreserved tickets than there are seats available.

I've heard and seen of some serious crowding on the 445 which lacks rail service and useful airline service. Hopefully these sold out buses will encourage GLI to add another bus.

 

[Anderson]

What's the 445?

 

[jebr]

What's the 445?

TALLAHASSEE - BIRMINGHAM - NASHVILLE

http://extranet.greyhound.com/Revsup/schedules/pdf/445.pdf

 

[guest]

I use to ride Amtrak more often RVR-WAS-BAL-NYP until prices started going up. Now I'm back to Greyhound/MegaBus.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

I use to ride Amtrak more often RVR-WAS-BAL-NYP until prices started going up. Now I'm back to Greyhound/MegaBus.

Yeah, I do that sometimes, too, because RHD (the Greyhound code) has a great station and a huge yard right around the corner!

 

[jebr]

Is Greyhound actually doing much of anything with this new policy? It seems, based on comments on their Facebook page, that buses are still overbooked on a regular basis (and at no small amount, either.)

I'm starting to suspect this is just a way for Greyhound to get some extra cash on change fees.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Is Greyhound actually doing much of anything with this new policy? It seems, based on comments on their Facebook page, that buses are still overbooked on a regular basis (and at no small amount, either.)

I'm starting to suspect this is just a way for Greyhound to get some extra cash on change fees.

The buses in the northeast are still not reserved. But Greyhound gets lots of passengers over there, so that's probably where the complaints are coming from. Many people only comment about bad things, it's human nature. Long-distance runs don't get overbooked anyway, so it's hardly "a regular basis".

 

[Mgee]

I'm in Boston. I notice now that Greyhound is charging $2.50 "convenience fee" for purchasing tickets online (for "will call" at the ticket machine, or from an agent) as well as for print at home tickets. Trying to avoid these fees I purchased my ticket from an agent last week -- and found out they add $1 even for that!

I am trying to figure out the logic of charging customers $2.50 when they print their own tickets at home, and at a kiosk. But, why a fee of $1 for standing in a long line and getting one of the typically overworked and grumpy ticket agents to sell it to me?

Imagine how much better Greyhound could be if it had sane and intelligent people managing it.

 

[Amtrak Cajun]

Swadian, I've been on LD runs that had people standing because there were no seats left.

Of course, any run heading westbound from NOL, Baton Rouge, etc will be like that. Houston/San Antonio/El Paso is a very popular bus run here.

 

[jebr]

I'm in Boston. I notice now that Greyhound is charging $2.50 "convenience fee" for purchasing tickets online (for "will call" at the ticket machine, or from an agent) as well as for print at home tickets. Trying to avoid these fees I purchased my ticket from an agent last week -- and found out they add $1 even for that!
I am trying to figure out the logic of charging customers $2.50 when they print their own tickets at home, and at a kiosk. But, why a fee of $1 for standing in a long line and getting one of the typically overworked and grumpy ticket agents to sell it to me?

Imagine how much better Greyhound could be if it had sane and intelligent people managing it.

Usually if it's an Express route where they're competing against Megabus, they'll drop that fee to 50 cents. However, they got me once with a "facility fee" of $2.50, even though there was no cost to print the ticket at home.

There's sadly no real good bus company that's generally competent, in my experience. All of them have their idiosyncrasies. The one I've had the best luck with is Jefferson Lines, but they're Midwest-only. (I've actually had better luck with Megabus than Greyhound, but YMMV.)

 

[railiner]

All of this online ticketing, and other alternatives such as the 7-Eleven ticketing, is a royal PITA to employees....

I wish we could go back to the regulated days, when the government determined what a fair fare was, and protected franchised carrier's from cut-throat competition, allowing a much higher level of service, and employees making a decent living wage. And carrier's were required to "cross-subsidize" themself....they were given choice lucrative routes, that allowed them to still operate lightly patronized, but socially necessary money losing routes. Just look at a Russell's Guide from the sixties that was as thick with schedules as a Manhattan phone directory.

Currently, customer's show up with either improperly printed at home tickets--sometimes missing segments, or wrong date and time, or no ticket at all--just their smartphone, which cannot currently be used at all boarding points....

It used to be simple. Straight-forward mileage based fares, with one-ways good for two month's, and discounted roundtrips good for a year. On easy to read, not to mention, easy to collect and envelope ticket stock.

And as far as reservations systems go....we used to do a pretty good job of guesstimating ridership, by using simple historic ridership records, weighted by current trends, and any special current circumstances that could effect it.

And we used to: "....if the bus is full when you arrive, we'll put another in service just for you". And we actually did just that......

Maybe I'm just showing my age, and nostalgia for the 'good old days', but I honestly believe service overall was better for not just the employee's, but the travelling public as well......

 

[chakk]

The Greyhound route between Denver and Grand Junction is also very popular and buses are often completely full. I was even denied boarding once at Frisco, CO enroute to Denver by the driver, even though I had my own printed ticket which showed that it was the very first reserved for that scheduled departure. This meant I would miss my airline flight home that evening to California. So with quick thinking, I boarded a westbound Greyhound an hour later -- explaining my situation to the driver -- who then carried me free to Glenwood Springs, where I overnighted in a motel and took the CZ the next afternoon to California.

 

[railiner]

Just goes to show my point....years ago, when we knew ridership was likely to be heavy, we ran a second bus on that route out of Grand Junction, anticipating overloading enroute to Denver. And in some instances where we did not due to our ridership projection, and an extra heavy load developed, we would run an empty bus out of Denver to meet the overload and then double it back into Denver. Passenger's were given the choice of standing for a while, or waiting for the next schedule...no one was turned away or left stranded....

 

[Amtrak Cajun]

Well, i will say this, both schedules, 1299 out of New Orleans, and 1249 out of Baton Rouge, that I rode on this morning were full. Both drivers were courteous and got me home safely, so thanks to Gabriel (1299) and the second driver on 1249, whose name I didnt get due to being tired.