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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

That makes sense. and fits FlixBus history of growing through acquisitions. Not working for them anymore, but I still route for them. They treat employees well, as well as any large employer, treat their partners (those companies operating the buses) reasonably well and actually do add value through their way better booking system.

Fun fact, the actual operations come from one of their earlier acquisitions, MeinFernbus, and are still based in Berlin (last time I checked) and not the Headquarters in Munich.

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They might be great for employees, but have a terrible reputation among customers atleast in Europe.

Most common issues seems to be staff often not enforcing/honouring seat reservations, the company refusing to implement a tag/validation system for hold luggage (allowing rampant theft) as well as bad on time performance + frequent last minute cancellations

> Most common issues seems to be staff often not enforcing/honouring seat reservations

My understanding is they don't actually have any staff on the bus, they are a booking system and branding provider for smaller bus operators. There are some small exceptions where providing bus services requires actually operating a bus in a given country but they only do the bare minimum there.

Those are all implementation details that a passenger doesn't care about. Seat reservations aren't honoured. That has little to do with the ownership structure. You're getting on a big green bus with a huge Flixbus logo on the side, of course it's Flixbus's fault if things are wrong.

True to a degree but in the end you get what you pay for. If you want a more standardized experience, take an IC bus, or the train. Just like an Uber. Compared to Uber I agree the aggressive branding of the busses is misleading though.

Who do I give my money to? If I give my money to <company X> for something, and that something is wrong in some way, then it is the responsibility of <company X> to resolve the problem. Period, full stop. If <company Y> is actually at fault, then <company X> is responsible for dealing with <company Y> to resolve the situation.

Do you have the same opinion when you buy a flight on Expedia?

I don't use Expedia, but if I paid my money to them, then yes. If you, as a company, take my money in exchange for something, then that something is your responsibility to make right.

That seems like a pretty extreme position to me, I guess we just have different standards for these kinds of providers then.

If I go into Best Buy and buy a hard drive (I don't, but play along) and I get home and it doesn't work because of a broken connector... I bring it back to Best Buy and have them replace it for a new one. Best Buy sold it to me, I paid them for it, it's their responsibility to resolve any problems.

If it's 6 months later and the drive starts to fail, I'm in warranty territory at that point. For this case, I go to the manufacturer. So I guess there's some grey area.

If I buy a flight on Expedia (I wouldn't but that's beside the point), do I get on a plane that says "Expedia" on the side of it? I've never heard of FlixBus, but it seems like the answer would be yes in their case, which is a very relevant difference IMO.

A price comparison website is different to a company subcontracting services. Expedia don't represent themselves as the supplier, Flixbus apparently does.

Shitty customer service might have flown in Germany (I live in Berlin now, ask me how garbage most retailers at treating their customers, it's bad) but it won't win them much in teh way of goodwill or customers in the US which typically has a better track when it comes to customer service. So there's hope that this might change in the future.

Not sure greyhound was/is the paragon of customer service though either.

Greyhound has terrible customer service [0]. I’ve heard many reports of lost baggage, the bus being delayed by up to 12 hours, and staff not answering questions.

[0]: https://www.bbb.org/us/tx/dallas/profile/bus-lines/greyhound...

Have you ever been in a Greyhound terminal, never mind having traveled via Greyhound bus? The worst customer service on the continent of Europe would be a vast improvement on the squalid unhygienic condition of literally everything owned or leased by Greyhound, not to mention the eagerness to cancel trips so that passengers unexpectedly have to layover 13 hours in e.g. downtown Indianapolis in such condition.

Jerry: I don't understand. Do you have my reservation?

Rental Car Agent: We have your reservation, we just ran out of cars.

Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.

Rental Car Agent: I think I know why we have reservations.

Jerry: I don't think you do. You see, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to hold the reservation. And that's really the most important part of the reservation: the holding. Anybody can just take them.

U-Haul does this too, maybe it's sector-wide. Anecdotally, they appear to have no equipment reserve. If, at crunch time at the end of the month, a rental customer does not return the vehicle at a scheduled time then that means a previously issued 'reservation' isn't going to be honored, at least not at that place and time. They'll try to upgrade to a larger truck if available, or try to send you 50 miles away chasing another truck of the same size (which often isn't actually there) or they'll try to incent you via a heavy discount to rent the same truck 1-2 days later when it's finally available - just know that a reservation is an entirely notional construct to them.

How would you build a better system in an industry with tight margins? They are at the whim of the person with the vehicle to return it on time.

Outside of regulation which requires companies to actually hold the reservations, and keep a certain number of reserve vehicles on standby it's not gonna happen because customers will not pay the increased prices that such a company would need to charge. Effectively, the entire system is stuck in a local maximum that is much lower than the global maximum.

One possibility is to simply charge an optional premium price to actually hold a reservation, but I suspect the premium would probably be too high for anyone to really take up and would simply lead to a lot of bad press.

You kinda get what you pay for, or more, actually. It may be crammed and slow, but there are some overnight routes just not comparable with train offerings.

> They might be great for employees, but have a terrible reputation among customers atleast in Europe.

This is the first time I hear about it. My personal experience was that it got a bit worse over the years, but still not as bad as Deutsche Bahn and the likes.

I had to use flixbus once when I was traveling to france and the train system was on strike (again)

I had such a shitty experience. A “direct” bus making stopover in every major city in between at rush hour, giving us completely different seats than what we booked, bus was late to arrive at pickup point, no indications about where to actually wait for the bus, late to arrive… never ever again will I take a flixbus.

Took them regularly here in NL for a few months pre-Covid and I thought they were pretty great. Much better and faster than the national railway (even their intercity trains stop every 25km).

Do you root for them or route for them? Not trying to fix potential typo, I am just curious what does it mean to “route” for a bus company.

From context, I'd say the GP is specifically rooting for this company (to do well.)

For the sake of the scenario, though, I'd imagine routing for a (transportation) company would involve logistics and timetables over a map.

Even when I worked there I didn't do the routing. Now I still root for them. Auto-Correct is a blessing sometimes!

treat their partners (those companies operating the buses)

So this is just Uber for buses.

In Greyhound's good years, they not only owned the buses, they had them custom-designed and built.[1]

[1] https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/greyhound-scenicrui...

Well, FlixBus is not using freelancers or ignoring existing regulations around their business. So not the traditional gig economy pseudo-tech company.

> They treat employees well

Are you including drivers in that?

Honestly, from what I've seen, I would go out on a limb and say yes. At least not any worse than other bus or truck companies. After all, the buses are operated by third parties and those are employing the drivers. Back the day FlixBus had a policy of having two drivers on long rides and those over night, even when that wasn't a legal requirement. Not sure if that is still the case or not.

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