Planning for Failure - Greyhound Knows How to Fail

http://www.planningforfailure.com/post/753812919/greyhound-knows-how-to-fail

by toddcharron • 16 years ago

120 59 16 years ago

I had the pleasure of attending Agile Coach Camp Canada this year. It was an amazing experience. I’ll be writing about that experience in a future post, but in this post, I would like to address what I had to go through just to get to the conference...

JeremyStein• 16 years ago

Ah, I love the ending! Aren't credit cards great? They actually believe their customers when you tell them you didn't get something.

hga• 16 years ago

I suspect they too know this "happens sometimes" with Greyhound.

ultrasaurus• 16 years ago

Agreed, I wish more people charged back in situations like these, then the black mark would clearly be on the bad companies rather than the small% of customers who actually do it.

(Side note, I only skimmed the article, but a good piece of advice is to mention charge back a few times when you're in this kind of situation. I find that it speeds up the outcome, succeed or fail.)

joejohnson2• 16 years ago

This is a nice feature of credit cards. But no, I don't think credit cards are "great". They hurt small businesses, and because they refund to the customer so quickly, businesses usually take the loss in identity theft and similar situations.

gaius• 16 years ago

Here in the UK they are obligated to by the Consumer Credit Act.

Having said that, Amex would kick ass on your behalf anyway, since their target market could have any card they wanted, they compete on customer service.

ggchappell• 16 years ago

> You want to plan for failure? Start by not caring about your customers. Be just like Greyhound and you’ll achieve failure soon enough.

> Quality and service matter.

> Those who care, win.

Well, maybe. I mean I see his point, but the fact remains that Greyhound is probably the most successful bus company in the U.S. Could it be that customer service is not as critical to business success as the writer claims it is? I mean I wish it were, but this is reality we're talking about.

kiba• 16 years ago

The minimum capital I can think of for entering the bus transportation market is well, big long comfortable bus with all the whistle and doodads, fuels, a driver who doesn't crash the bus, and a machine to receive money. Then you need money for paying mechanics, accountants, and gods know what else.

So it might be that Greyhound just doesn't have a whole lot of competition due to high barrier of entry.

mootothemax• 16 years ago

I wouldn't mind knowing what's more expensive: all that you mentioned; or the public liability insurance.

ojbyrne• 16 years ago

Well in the DC-NYC-Boston corridor they have a ton of competition. Because all you really need is one bus you can drive yourself (or you and your extended family). Google "Chinatown Bus."

zackattack• 16 years ago

I've looked into this.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1476718

smackfu• 16 years ago

I would guess most customers just buy their tickets in the bus station. Website, e-commerce, phone support, all fairly irrelevant to that group.

smallblacksun• 16 years ago

Having traveled by Greyhound a few times, that is definitely the case. Most travelers are poor, and many of them don't even have credit cards (either because they are poor, or illegals, or both).

jakevoytko• 16 years ago

It probably depends a lot on the industry. If your ticket purchase works, you never need to speak to a human being to ride a bus. Contrast this with cable companies - to sign up, you must have at least two customer service experiences: one to schedule the appointment, one to have the service installed. I think this accounts for their generally poor public opinion. They're not actually worse than most companies, but their customer service footprint is frontloaded and big.

I bet Greyhound receives an extremely low call volume in comparison. After all, by default, you don't talk to a human. Most callers with special complaints are probably routed to people with scripts that have most arrows point to "I'm sorry, but I can't help you. Do you have any other issues today?", and Greyhound has made the calculation that this will not impact their bottom line.

gamble• 16 years ago

For high-volume routes the Chinatown busses compete very successfully, but Greyhound's real competition is Southwest, Spirit Air, Amtrak, or just driving yourself. Greyhound has become so bad that their clientele is down to folks who literally have no other option.

klous• 16 years ago

This is ripe for The Consumerist website. I suggest if it's available in your area, take the Megabus over Greyhound. Free Wifi on board.

jat850• 16 years ago

That's actually not a bad recommendation. If I've inferred correctly from the article, the writer is from Canada, and I am as well. Bus service choices are pretty limited in Canada.

Megabus, for example, only travels between about 6 or 7 cities in eastern Ontario and Quebec. Being from western Canada, our choices are incredibly limited here - Greyhound between major destinations along the Trans Canada highway, basically, or a regional carrier.

That said, the bus is one of my favourite ways to travel, as I very much enjoy having the option to read, code, sleep, etc. on long journeys. This is the same reason I enjoy train travel.

Naga• 16 years ago

I took my share of Greyhound trips from Ottawa to Toronto, because it was cheaper than VIA Rail was. The last straw was when the bus that I was to take from Toronto to where I live left two hours early, leaving me stranded in Toronto at 6 AM after taking a 5 hour bus ride from Ottawa. Thank God for GO Transit.

What I really hate about them is that they have a schedule, but not really. They constantly sell more tickets than there are seats on the bus. The good part about this is that since your ticket isn't connected to a bus, you can take one any time on that day. But then of course 200 people try to get on an 80 person bus. It's a terrible mess.

To make matters worse, none of the other bus companies in Southern Ontario actually go to Ottawa, so its Greyhound or nothing.

So now I only take the train. It is always a pleasant trip. Definitely worth the price.

stcredzero• 16 years ago

Megabus, for example, only travels between about 6 or 7 cities in eastern Ontario and Quebec.

That makes Megabus the Southwest of Canadian bus service.

LiveTheDream• 16 years ago

Bolt Bus is on the same level as Megabus. It's cheap, very clean, and has free wifi on board.

pak• 16 years ago

Surprise, Bolt Bus is a 50/50 venture between Greyhound and Peter Pan.

blahedo• 16 years ago

I would have gone for the chargeback way sooner than that, roughly at the time I had the thought, "why am I jumping through this many hoops for their screwup?"

mcknz3• 16 years ago

But that makes for a boring customer service case study.

tonystubblebine2• 16 years ago

Definitely. The chargeback is an underutilized feature of credit cards. A couple of things about chargebacks:

1. In my experience, you don't need to provide any documentation unless the merchant disputes your chargeback. So you should keep documentation, receipts, screen shots, notes, but not worry about filling out a detailed initial incident report.

2. Some people have claimed that you risk running afoul of your credit card if you use this feature too often. I'd say I use it twice per year and I've never been hassled.

3. Morally, I think you're just obligated to make a single attempt to rectify a misunderstanding with a merchant.

4. My credit cards let me fill out a report online, which makes this extremely convenient.

justinph• 16 years ago

Despite all the hate for American Express's laughably weak passwords, they make incredibly easy to dispute a charge. There's literally a button by every transaction on listed in your account, just begging for you to click it.

clistctrl• 16 years ago

As an added bonus I believe there is a fine to the company for each charge back. I'm not entirely true if this is correct, or if its only partially correct however even the thought makes me smile when I think about how frustrated the company had just made me feel.

ladyada• 16 years ago

Two chargebacks a year? Thats quite a bit. Do you deal with a lot of sketchy places? Do you file a chargeback if you're not happy with the service?

atiw• 16 years ago

I had the EXACT same experience. Same situation, same results.

Although I never called my credit card company to do a charge back. In fact, right until this moment, I did not even know I can do this. It's been a year now. I am a cofounder and sole developer of a startup, and I am working full time to pay my bills and for immigration purposes. Basically, I figured I would rather not waste time at all, since I am really out of it. So do you think it might be worth a shot to even try to get that charge back from my credit card company, after almost a year? In my opinion, it might lead to more issues. It's 50 bucks. What do you suggest? Worth my time?

tomsaffell• 16 years ago

AMEX are very good about refunding transactions up to 3 months old - after that it is more difficult. (very good == one easy phone call, instant temporary refund, they send you lots of letters (for months)(bad), they eventually decide to make the refund permanent).

jsdalton• 16 years ago

The title of this article is a bit confusing.

Given that the blog itself is called "Planning For Failure," I expected it to be about how Greyhound "knew" how to fail in a graceful manner. I read through about halfway until I realized it was just a rant about failure at various points in Greyhound's ticketing system.

Nothing wrong with that, just not the article I was expecting to read.

jvdh• 16 years ago

True, but almost everyone he came into contact with knew about the failure, knew it 'happened sometimes', yet still did not know how to fix it! Reading this, I almost get the impression that it's an elaborate attempt to fail in the most miserable way possible. Either that or they wanted to create a Kafka experience.

joejohnson2• 16 years ago

That same thing happened to me. I sent my extra, unused ticket reciept in to their corporate office in Texas and they sent me a refund in a mere six weeks.

This company seems to have a monopoly in the long-distance bus service market. I also think the majority of their business is done offline (in-person sales at stations). So, unfortunately, these terrible systems aren't likely to change anytime soon.

jrockway• 16 years ago

As I was reading this, I kept chanting "charge... back! charge... back! charge... back!" in the back of my mind. I was happy to find that that's exactly how he resolved the situation.

Never do a big company a favor, especially when they won't return it. Sure, he could have gotten his money back by faxing stuff and mailing stuff and being glued to the phone for a day. Or he could fill out a form on his credit card's website, and now Greyhound has to do all the dirty work. Which would you choose?

chaosmachine• 16 years ago

Greyhound service is terrible, but they can get away with it because they're the cheapest way to get from one side of the country to the other. It's a 4 day ride, the seats won't recline, it smells like someone crapped in their pants, the terminals are scary, and your luggage will get lost, but you save a few hundred over the next cheapest option.

(I did toronto to vancouver and back a couple years ago. It's 8 days you won't soon forget!)

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

If you're going coast to coast in the US with advanced notice, a plane ticket can often be cheaper.

robryan• 16 years ago

Might be something to do with lots of luggage? I'd imagine this would be a lot cheaper on a bus than on a plane?

alanh• 16 years ago

So hard not to rage in sympathy-frustration while reading this

ethan• 16 years ago

It's not just tickets, every part of the Greyhound experience is piss-poor. Never again.

joblessjunkie• 16 years ago

When I imagine riding the bus, I would never expect fancy web pages and automated credit card processing. You want modern efficiency, try the airport.

Bus travelers purchase tickets in person, on the day of travel, with wadded up old paper currency. That's the way it's always been, and always will be.

dasil003• 16 years ago

Did you just mention efficiency and the place where TSA cretin squad plants their fat asses in the same sentence?

lsc• 16 years ago

the interesting lesson here for everyone who accepts credit cards is this: think you don't have a satisfaction guaranteed, money back policy? think again.

Now, I don't think this is a bad thing, but I wonder why more businesses don't offer a money back guarantee as policy straight up? I mean, if the customer wants their money back, the customer will get their money back; there's not much you can do about it. So why not have a liberal money back policy yourself? it prevents most chargebacks (but not all... some consumers are either just jerks or assume you will give them the run-around, those people will initiate chargebacks even if you do have an easy money-back policy) and you get a lot more goodwill out of a refund you give than out of a chargeback.

grellas• 16 years ago

Greyhound's failure happened years ago because of a changing demographic in America. Small-town America rode buses all over the place between WWI and WWI and Greyhound prospered in meeting the market demand for this service. At that time, the interstate highway system did not exist and travel of this type was best done by bus. With the advent of the freeway system, and with the rise of modern air travel, the glory days of back-road bus service ended. Greyhound eventually filed for bankruptcy and, after emerging, has been a ghost of its old self. "Is this 1958?" the author of this piece asks in amazement. Well, for a company long operating at the margins, it might as well be and its customer service appears to be nothing more than a reflection of this reality.

Greyhound's "failure" happened in reality long ago and what we see now is a company that is among the walking dead. This does not excuse what happened to this poor, hapless customer but it probably explains it.

SiVal2• 16 years ago

The British FirstGroup PLC owns Laidlaw Int'l which owns Greyhound. FirstGroup, with the tag line "Transforming Travel", seems to see this relic of America's past as its ticket to Britain's future and features it prominently on FirstGroup's UK home page. A bankrupted company that is part of the "holdings" of a clueless company that itself is a property of an investment vehicle for moneyed "Lords" on the other side of the planet is about the closest thing the capitalist west has to a Soviet / Chinese / French government agency in terms of service orientation.

SiVal2• 16 years ago

I meant to add "in the private sector." It's a great way to turn a private company into a pseudo-gov't bureau.

Tichy• 16 years ago

"Agile Coach Camp Canada"

Ironically, it sounds as if he is going to a conference about improving public transport.

marze• 16 years ago

It is ridiculous to assume this situation exists as a result of lack of capability on Greyhound's part. It exists because they make more money this way from people who can't figure out how to make Greyhound give them their money back. Why change it and reduce revenue?

Planning for Failure - Greyhound Knows How to Fail

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