This weekend, Sean spent a miserable seven hours sitting in the aisle of a packed Megabus traveling between two East Coast cities. The company had taken too many reservations for the overnight bus, and had four five more passengers than seats. The last four five passengers had a choice between two incredibly crappy options: be stranded overnight in the city of departure and miss their connections, or crouch in the aisle, cursing Megabus with every mile. Sean and his companions went for the second option.

Below is an email I just sent to Megabus in response to me being forced to sit in the isle of one of their buses for the entire 7 hours of my bus. Please post. I want to make sure everyone is aware of this mistake that I can’t comprehend how Megabus would be so stupid to make such a mistake.

To whom this may concern:

On February 21st, I made a reservation for three people for a bus for 3/13 from [redacted], receiving the confirmation number [redacted]. When I arrived at the bus at around [ten minutes before departure], the entire bus was at capacity, leaving me, my 2 friends, and 2 other people with no seats. The bus driver checked everyones reservations on the bus and they all had legitimate reservations. The bus driver proceeded to call whoever his superior was and they advised him that all he could do was have us call customer service.

All of us with no seats, as you would imagine, got very angry and vocal about this, as we all had somewhere to be with connecting buses that we also paid for and could not afford to be stranded in [redacted] to wait for the next Megabus as 6am the next day. I cannot afford a hotel, nor would I want to waste that time when the issue was not my problem. I told the driver I’d rather sit in the isle of the bus then pay for a hotel and take the next bus. He, with good intentions, allowed us to do so. He was very adamant about us not informing anyone of him allowing us to do this as it would get him fired. However, there is no other way to tell me story; plus everyone else on the bus seemed to indicate that they were going to mention this anyway. Please do not fire this man. We were very angry people with no other choice. He was just trying to make the customers happy, which no one else seems to want to do.

So I sat on this bus in the isle for the entire 7 hours of my bus ride, along with 4 other people. This was the worst 7 hours of my entire life. One would normally attempt to sleep for those 7 hours overnight, but as you would imagine that was quite impossible for me. Being a bus company that I would assume has been around for quite a while, I would think that your company would not be stupid enough to make such an idiotic mistake after doing what you’ve been doing so long.

I demand first and foremost that someone look into this issue and insure that this does not happen again to other. I also demand a full refund for my tickets and possibly some other sort of compensation. This was a terrible experience and will make sure that everyone I know and the internet is aware of your mistake and my misfortune. The question is how angry I am about it and what I say about your customer service when I do so.

I know mistakes happen, but I just want to ensure that something is done about this issue.

Yeah, Sean could have arrived earlier, but the last four five people to arrive would have gone without seats, even if Sean weren’t one of them. Could Megabus have handled the situation better on a weekend night, other than telling the passengers to call customer service in the morning?

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