I Also Complain

Having endured a couple of nightmare incidents thanks to First Buses, I have decided to following in Ronnie's footsteps and have a good moan about it.

I'm posting the following off today:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I find myself once again forced to complain about the appalling standard of service offered by your company this past week.

On Thursday 2nd December I took me over an hour and a half to get from Maryhill to Battlefield. Just over seven miles as the crow flies, so congratulations on managing to make my journey time longer than it would have been had I been travelling to Edinburgh or Kilmarnock.

The reason? Well, apart from the fact that your company seems to have decided that it would be hilarious if every bus you run goes down Union Street at the same time, every passenger on the 44 service I was travelling on was unceremoniously turfed off at Larkfield depot for reasons the driver felt best kept to himself.
I did however manage to establish that there was nothing wrong with the bus itself, which leaves me mystified as to why paying customers were bundled off the bus and forced to wait another 10 minutes in the freezing cold until another bus deigned to let us on.

Have you any explanation for this incident? Usually when a company treat you like a mug, they do at least provide some sort of cursory explanation for their behaviour. See if you can come up with anything.

Onto incident number two. This occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning (5th December).
Having spend a pleasant evening with some friends at the Woodside Social (really, you must go), I decided to forgo the hassle of queuing for a Taxi and get the 66 back down the road.

Imagine my surprise then when I found that I was to be charged £2.00 for my journey, 80p above the normal fare.

Apparently your firm reckons it’s a great idea to arbitrarily raise prices in the kind of “take it or leave it” manner you might expect from a drug dealer. A kind observer might call this blatant profiteering, I however would describe it as extortion, and the remarkably shabby treatment of loyal customers.

So lets move on to redress.

For my nightmare Thursday I’m going to be looking for £14.50. That’s an hour and a half at your driver’s rate of pay plus a refund of my £2.50 day ticket. £2.50 of course because I work for a living and therefore have to be on a bus before 9.30 am, which apparently means I have to be charged more than people who just fancy nipping over to the park of an afternoon.

As for Saturday/Sunday, because you can’t be bothered employing people who can make change, I had already put my £1.20 into the machine before your driver demanded I cross his palm with 80 pence more. I only had another quid, so that’s another pound you owe me.

I will expect my cheque for £15.50 by return of post.

Big shout out to all the lads, you’re all doing a bang up job.

Oh and if you want to discuss the issues I have raised over the phone be sure and leave it until after 7pm to call. I only get out of work at 5.30 remember.

Yours sincerely,


Fraser Campbell