Coach driver wanted to sue for libel

baza52

You seem to have posted quite a lot online about this driver as well as sending a few emails to different places.

What was the reason he denied you boarding the coach?
What exactly did you say about the driver? Did people reply to your tweets?

For him to go to all this trouble it must have been more than your letting on.
Would you be happy if the driver had posted your picture online with comments about you?

error1001

Hi

If the Driver had said to us, no i cant take you because my bus is full or something else personally would not have any problem with it

The Only back chat we gave to him was we wanted to know
The reason why he would not take us on - all we did was we showed him the ticket and asked him nicely can we take this bus because our ticket says we can take an earlier bus, to which he replied "No" then we asked him any reason why are you full or anything. Then he replied "Listen don't tell me how to do my job your ticket says for so and so time i am not going to take you"

All we wanted to know what the reason was thats it, if he said i got a full bus then thats fine would have been ok with it, but the way he responded was very rude and verbally agressive. I personally have no idea why he refused us...surely its courtesy to just give us a simply reason...he definitely wasn't doing a bus run considering he came back 45 mins later with no passengers just to take a picture of us and climb on our bus. (The End point we were going to was a total time of 1hour 15mins) so who knows what he was doing during that period and why he came back.

Reason why we took a picture of his number plate is we wanted to report the driver for him behaving like this surely some good customer service wont hurt?

Second driver allowed us to go on the bus, but this was our actual bus time but like i mentioned
so we had no issues here

daytona0 wrote: »

I find this bit very interesting!

The fact that he "fobbed us off" suggests you gave a bit of backchat to him. Whether or not the ticket was valid/invalid, I'm fairly confident that they can refuse to let someone ride the bus. If he's told you (fobbed us off) that you can't ride and you keep asking them he's going to get a bit peeved off. So the "aggressive" behaviour is not only subjective (maybe exaggerated), but also understandable to an extent (Fair play if he was swearing or being physically aggressive, I'm on your side).

Instead of walking away and waiting 45 minutes which "didnt really bother us", you've gone and taken photos of the bus' number plate. Really? That's just like throwing yourself under the bus!

As for him taking a picture of you, that is kinda worrying in fairness. I would be very interested to know what ACTUALLY happened on the day before that took place and also whether the second coach driver allowed you to travel on their bus.

I genuinely think you've caused a lot of the problems BUT the bus driver has reacted badly. If your complaints are factual and not excessive then I simply cannot see how a libel case would be successful.

Sometimes in life the easy option is to just walk away. Now, because you didn't walk away when refused travel, you've created a storm.

lovinituk

All sounds a bit childish from both sides.

baza52

so you asked if you could use your ticket and he looked at it and said no.
You then argued with him no doubt in front of other passengers demanding he explain himself.

No wonder he got the hump.

What kind of ticket did you have and what time were you trying to get on his bus? Did you have an off peak ticket and try to use it in peak times by any chance.

unholyangel

OP whats the law firm? You can disclose that much without jeopardising either your or the bus drivers identity. The reason I'm asking is that there are solicitor firms who basically charge to send threatening letters for various reasons - often only requiring the person to fill out boxes in an online form for use in template letters with no actual contact with a solicitor never mind whether the case has any basis of succeeding.


If you have anything that backs you up - say for example a text message sent on the day of the incident sent to a parent or friend telling them what happened (even if just a "you wont believe this, bus driver just followed us onto another bus and took our picture! what a freak"), save them.

Tbh I think the thing to keep in mind here is would a bus driver take legal action that would cost them 5-10 years salary given the specialist solicitors required? Or are bus drivers the new secret millionaires of society? Not being mean, just I knew a few bus drivers and none of them make what I would call a good wage.

However, libel laws are far too complex to get advice from random strangers on the internet so try and get a free half hour consultation with a professional.

My gut instinct says he's bluffing but my brain says never underestimate how crazy people can be.

photome

More to this than meets the eye, me thinks

Maybe the driver was off duty, was there anyone on the bus? he didnt go far as you say he was back in less than 45 minutes which suggests he wasnt going where you wanted to go.

Another poster has mentioned you have posted lots about him over the internet that perhaps you are not sharing on here

LadyDee

One of the good pieces of advice I've seen is to write the complaining email, store it as a draft for a couple of days, review it then think "is this really important"? What a lot of trouble you've created when you could just have walked away.

paddyrg

Who mentioned libel? A real law firm would have known they were bluffing, and the 'letter of (before?) action' had nothing to do with a high court libel action. Seriously, a libel case is £10k+ in fees and the complainant needs to prove they can pay the legal bills, so it's incredibly unlikely to actually be a libel action.

. he definitely wasn't doing a bus run considering he came back 45 mins later with no passengers just to take a picture of us and climb on our bus. (The End point we were going to was a total time of 1hour 15mins)

Perhaps he didn't let you on his bus because he wasn't going anywhere, and was trying to point out to you that your bus time was listed because that's the time the bus went, not the one he was repositioning, or something.

Sounds like bad communication and pettiness from all sides here, but not like libel.

Bobcrowther

Sounds like OP is just another one of those entitled childish types who gets all peed off when told "no" to something. Then goes and bleats about it on social media.

callum9999

error1001 wrote: »

Hi

If the Driver had said to us, no i cant take you because my bus is full or something else personally would not have any problem with it

The Only back chat we gave to him was we wanted to know
The reason why he would not take us on - all we did was we showed him the ticket and asked him nicely can we take this bus because our ticket says we can take an earlier bus, to which he replied "No" then we asked him any reason why are you full or anything. Then he replied "Listen don't tell me how to do my job your ticket says for so and so time i am not going to take you"

All we wanted to know what the reason was thats it, if he said i got a full bus then thats fine would have been ok with it, but the way he responded was very rude and verbally agressive. I personally have no idea why he refused us...surely its courtesy to just give us a simply reason...he definitely wasn't doing a bus run considering he came back 45 mins later with no passengers just to take a picture of us and climb on our bus. (The End point we were going to was a total time of 1hour 15mins) so who knows what he was doing during that period and why he came back.

Reason why we took a picture of his number plate is we wanted to report the driver for him behaving like this surely some good customer service wont hurt?

Second driver allowed us to go on the bus, but this was our actual bus time but like i mentioned
so we had no issues here

Why were you complaining that he didn't let you on the bus if you know he wasn't going to your destination then? It would make sense for you to continue complaining about his attitude if you were that bothered by it, but not to repeat the line that you should have been allowed on the bus.

I'm not accusing you of lying, but it's very dangerous to act on advice given to you if you've only posted part of the story. No-one here knows you - even if you think describing it 100% accurately would put you in a bad light, you have to explain it that way because that's exactly how any judge would see it (not that I believe for a second any judge will see it based on what you've written!).