The Woman Who Tried to Book a Bus Ticket Online and Brought Busaras to a Halt

AKA BuyOnline Me Bollix

I was getting the bus from Dublin to Longford today from Busaras. The Busaras is the central bus station in Dublin and is like the head bus station of the whole Bus Éireann fleet. As such you would expect it to be fully equipped to provide every service that Bus Éireann promises to provide to its customers.

Funny therefore that the whole service ground to a halt because one of its customers decided to book a ticket online on Bus Éireann's web-site.

Before all of this, it was a little annoying when I was queuing to board the bus that a couple of girls at the top of the queue had chosen to buy their tickets on the bus. I, like (almost) everyone else had bought my ticket in the station and had it with me. All I would have to do would be to show it to the driver as I boarded the bus and that would be that. Everything would move smoothly.

As well as being annoyed I was also quite impressed at the humanity of the bus driver. The two girls were obviously lost souls that didn't know their way around the practice of boarding a bus. Another theory I had was that the queue at the ticket desk had been too long for them and they reckoned they'd get away with it because they were girls. I was a good way back in the queue so I wasn't able to form a proper impression of them.

I have often seen a driver just point towards the ticket desk and tell the poor unfortunate to join the queue to buy a ticket there. If they made it back before it was time for him to leave he would talk to them again. If not. Well, there'd be another bus in two hours time.

Once or twice I have been the one so pointed at, so when the driver condescended to sell them a ticket - and then waited for them to assemble the money to pay for it - and then searched and found them change - I was content enough to put up with this. It only took three or four minutes.

Imagine my relief though when this little hold-up to the queue was removed and the girls plus their newly acquired tickets walked down the aisle of the bus and took their seats.

It was a short-lived relief though when the VERY NEXT person in the queue after the girls with no tickets was the woman with an e-mail print-out.

The driver hadn't seen one of these before. He read it. Several times.

I hadn't seen one of these before either. Not for booking bus tickets anyway. E-mail print-outs are commonplace now for airplane flights where online booking is increasingly the only way you can make a booking.

However, there don't seem to be many advantages in booking a bus ticket online. Out of curiosity I tried it out tonight. The only advantage I saw with it was that I could have saved €2 on my Dublin-Longford day-return by booking online.

If you're a very well organised person you can book your inter-city bus ticket online five years in advance at todays prices which might add up to a reasonable saving. It is currently possible to book a bus ticket online for any date up until 31 December 2013. Provided you're organised enough to remember that you pre-booked your ticket five years ago and be able to keep your e-mail print-out in a safe place you could be able to save a reasonably significant amount of money by doing this.

But it's not even as if you're really reserving a seat though. Buses are still filled on a first-come-first-served basis. You could stand in front of the driver waving your e-mail print-out screaming "I booked this five years ago" as much as you wanted but if all the seats were already taken you'd still have to wait for the next bus.

It's a funny thing that bus tickets should be cheaper to buy online because it appears that processing the online bookings is costlier. According to the terms on the Bus Éireann web-site:

"Once your credit card details have been processed, you will be sent an e-mail
confirmation with a validation code. You must print that confirmation e-mail and give it to the ticket issuing staff at the Bus Éireann ticket office or to the bus driver before travelling on the bus. The ticket clerk or bus driver will check the validation code electronically and then issue you with the appropriate travel ticket in exchange." You are also required to have photo ID with you.

The lady in question seems to have made the mistake of reading all of this and believing it! She thought it was enough to show the e-mail print-out to the driver and have a bit of ID with her and that would be it. Instead the bus driver took out a massive red book resembling a Thoms Directory and started leafing through it. Apparently it was the Big Rule Book of Bus Fares.

Meanwhile everyone else in the queue stood and scowled. My emotions varied from boredom to annoyance at the obvious stupidity of the woman with her bit of A4 paper to the obvious stupidity of the driver for not just telling her to feck off.

After the bus driver had re-read the e-mail and the Big Rule Book of Bus Fares it was the turn of another bus official to have a look at it. And then another. After three people had looked at the e-mail, and as far as I'm aware no validation code had been electronically checked, the woman was allowed to proceed on her journey. As were the rest of us passengers. The bus was only 12 minutes late leaving Busaras.

Once again, let me repeat: this was at the Bus ARAS. The central bus station of Bus Éireann. If they can't cope with an e-mail here what chance do the ones in the sticks have?