Coach Travel Nightmare --- Help

JordanSweeney

Hi Everyone,

I hope i am posting this in the right section, but i need your help.

last weekend we hired a coach to take 30 people to a festival. On the way the bus broke down.

3 people on the coach were working at the festival and could not be late. So they had to get a taxi all the way to the festival costing £80

eventually the rest of the party met up over an hour and a half late.

As well as this the coach was also 30 minutes or so late picking us up, leaving us in a dark field (we were the last ones there)

As you can guess we were not happy about the service we paid for. On Monday i complained. I am now being ignored and i know they have received my emails.

Is there a governing body or someone who monitors these companies I can complain further to. As i feel i am at a dead end. I am also out of pocket and want this resolving as soon as possible.

Thanks for you help in advance

Jordan

knightstyle

Did you pay by credit card? if so they may help if not looks like small claims court.

JordanSweeney

no it was all done by bank transfer.

i guess ill have to keep calling and hopefully ill get somewhere.

Thanks for your reply.

bap98189

JordanSweeney wrote: »

i guess ill have to keep calling and hopefully ill get somewhere.

No don't. Put your complaint in writing (Email is OK). That way you have a record of all your communication with the company. People can fob you off with all sorts of promises on the phone and you have no record of anything should you need it later on.

knightstyle

Agree with above, send at least two letters recorded and then a letter before action, LBA, again recorded. You want all your extra expenses repaid and some compensation do not settle for less.
The company should have insurance to cover this sort of thing so you may have to deal with them.

martindow

knightstyle wrote: »

Agree with above, send at least two letters recorded and then a letter before action, LBA, again recorded. You want all your extra expenses repaid and some compensation do not settle for less.
The company should have insurance to cover this sort of thing so you may have to deal with them.

I would not use recorded if you need to send letters. It can be refused or delivered without a signature being obtained so there will be no evidence of delivery. Send 1st class and ask at the PO counter for (free) certificates of posting. Courts consider this as evidence of delivery two working days later. Sending duplicate letters from two different POs with CoPs is better still.

I'm not sure you would necessarily be successful taking them to court. The coach broke down and they dealt with the situation by providing a replacement. Clearly there was a delay but a judge could decide that they remedied the problem in a reasonable way.

Were there any terms and conditions from the coach company when you booked? I imagine these would deal with problems like this and I would think they could exclude any consequential costs like taxi fares. .

JordanSweeney

Thanks for all your replies.

I originally did email my complaint, i have heard back off them explaining that they are looking into my email and are going to get back to me today.

fingers crossed everything get sorted.

Billy-no-Money

There is a trade organisation, the CPT (Confederation of Passenger Transport) - http://www.cpt-uk.org/ - though it does seem to act more in the interest of operators than passengers.

runningben16

Despite the breakdown, you were only an hour and a half late arriving at your destination? I would look at their T&C's, but I would imagine that they are well covered for delays caused by breakdowns