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Comment by phreeza | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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