Due to sudden change of my travel plans I have to travel to Madurai from Chennai and not from Bangalore as earlier planned. It was really that tough to find a ticket during the Diwali season. Some how I managed to find a ticket at www.redbus.in in Sangita Travels 10:15 bus. The ticket was price almost double (Rs. 1200). With no choices left over I booked the ticket with 17 seats pending. In a flash of 4 hours no tickets were left. I prayed I didn’t wait four hours to book the ticket. On the date of travel I reached the Bus Station earlier as I still didn’t trust Sangita Travels. Years back I remember a fellow traveler in an unpopular travels company being thrown out as two tickets were sold (online and by travels) for the same seat number. And of course the one who booked online had to suffer. The road to the bus station was not that easy to travel. In that extra heavy traffic it took more than two hours to reach which would normally take 30 mins. I took the boarding card from the travels company office which has the bus number and seat number. He asked me to wait till the bus arrived. Impatient to wait at the office I proceeded to the fuel station where the buses are stationed. The personnel of Sangita travels was present there to guide the passengers to the right buses. He was surprised to see the bus number in the boarding card. He called up the office in his mobile and enquired for about 15 mins and then asked me to wait. I smelt something fishy and went back to the office to check the bus number. I claimed that there seems to be no bus existing with that number (why give chances). In a flash he wrote another number and asked to board the bus immediately. Actually he want me to clear the office as other passengers with other issues were quarrelling at the office. So went back to the fuel station found the bus and boarded in. I was surprised to find the bus only half full with just 30 mins more for departure time. While casually enquiring my co-passenger about the reliability of the travels company he gave me some shocking vital statistics.
1) It may be that the buses for which the tickets were sold existed at all
2) More than 50% passengers are likely to cancel these sort of tickets which are mostly bought for backup. For each ticket cancellation they make around Rs. 200
3) Less than 50% passengers are likely to turn up by boarding time. Who else would know better how many can turn up in that heavy traffic during diwali season. They travels company can always claim the ticket as no show or claim the bus has left.
4) When the website showed that no more tickets are available the travels company was still selling on spot tickets to fill up the remaining seats.
So asked by co-passenger if there are tickets sold for buses that doesn’t exist what would happen if passengers with duplicate seat numbers turn up? Oooh.. In less than 5 mins a passenger came straight to me and claimed the seat. I was not surprised by now to see his boarding card with the same seat number. He had his time enquiring all around with no concrete reply from anyone. Finally he was arranged a seat at the last minute and the bus started at midnight 12:00. I really donno how many turned up managing the traffic and how many were sent back due to ‘no show’. But all I know was even at 12:00 midnight there were two seats free and was sold to someone on spot. The statistics of the business is mind boggling.
I feel I should thank the driver for safely driving home in all this drama and having the air con all throughout the journey. I heard people say that these sort of busses are known to switch off air cons during the journey to save fuel.
Leave a Reply