Last Sunday we took my son to Davenport, Iowa to board the Greyhound bus for Paducah, Kentucky. My son's a deckhand on river barges and he's just been hired by a barge line based in Paducah. They needed him to come to Paducah, a distance of four hundred ten miles, for hiring-in and company procedures training. They would pay for his transportation on the bus and put him up in a hotel while he was there.
The only schedule from Davenport to Paducah involved a twelve-hour layover in St. Louis and the total travel time for those four hundred miles was twenty-four hours. Not a pleasant prospect but the company was paying and he needs the job, so off he went.
By Wednesday afternoon he was ready to return home on the bus and wait for the company to call him with his boat assignment. We would pick him up in Davenport. That's when our real education in bus travel started. The nightmare is below the fold.
All of my son's fellow new-hires were able to leave Paducah on Wednesday afternoon. But there was no service from Paducah to Davenport, the only published schedule being one that departs at 8:30 in the morning.
"No problem," my son's new company said. "We'll put you up for another night and you can go tomorrow."
When "tomorrow" arrived it brought with it rain, sleet, snow and ice. No buses were running anywhere in the central Mississippi River valley. My son would have to wait another day. The company picked up another night in the motel and he left for the bus station bright and early yesterday morning to make that 8:30 AM bus.
When he arrived at the bus station he was told that there were no buses going into or out of Saint Louis because of road conditions there. It would be several hours, they said, before anything got out. They were right.
But several hours later things DID start rolling in Saint Louis. My son was thrilled. Finally he would get home.
Then the computers went down. The resultant mad scramble for printed schedules and hand-written ticket stock added another couple of hours to the delay.
At long last he departed Paducah early Friday afternoon.
At 6:00 last night he called us. He was in Marion, Illinois, where the bus had broken down, and they were waiting for another bus to continue the line. He'd come fifty-eight miles.
We heard nothing more till this morning. At 7:30 I called him. "Where are you?" I asked. "Bloomington," he replied. "When do you leave there?" "Eight o'clock tonight."
In twenty-four hours he had traveled a total of two hundred eighty-nine miles. He would be spending twelve hours in Bloomington, waiting to go the last one hundred twenty miles, and would arrive in Davenport tomorrow morning at 10:15 AM...seventy-five hours after his originally scheduled departure time of 8:30 AM on Thursday and forty-six hours after he'd first boarded a bus for the trip home.
Having spent a good portion of my life as an airline reservations agent, I thought "Surely there must be some way they can reroute him or compensate for the delays." And so I looked on Greyhound's website. This is their policy on refunds and exchanges for delayed service, in a handy Q and A form:
The bus was late. Am I entitled to a refund?
No. While Greyhound makes every effort to provide on-time service, it does not guarantee its departure and arrival times, which may be affected by any number of factors including weather, traffic, or mechanical problems. Greyhound is not liable for any inconvenience or expense caused as a result of such a delay.
The bus was late and I missed a connection on another bus line. Am I entitled to a refund of the other ticket?
No. Greyhound is not liable for the expense of connecting bus service missed as a result of a delay. However, you may wish to contact the connecting bus line for their specific refund procedures.
The bus was late and I missed a connecting flight. Am I entitled to a refund of the cost of my plane ticket?
No. Greyhound is not liable for any other travel expense caused as a result of a delay.
I did, of course, try calling Greyhound. I believe their toll-free number rings in to a call center in India, if the accent of the person who I spoke with is any indicator. Of course, there was nothing but a repetition of all the "No"s above when I asked if there were anything they could do.
So what, you're wondering, is the price difference between Greyhound and Northwest (the only carrier that flies from Davenport (Moline) to Paducah? It's $481.