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Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Going to Guelph? Good luck with that

from Claire XXXXXX XXXXXX.claire@gmail.com
to cj@thiscrazytrain.com
date Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 8:39 AM
subject another customer service FAIL
Jul 7 (6 days ago)

Hi CJ,

I have a daughter who will be going to school in Guelph next fall and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether or not she could use a GO bus.

I occasionally see a "Guelph" bus at the station and I suspect it passes a bus stop near my home. However, there is no map to show what route a bus takes when traveling between points listed on the schedule. For example, you would never know my bus makes up to 18 stops between the Go station and my house, only one is listed on the schedule!

I called customer service (CS). The agent had a hard time finding the route, told me it was impossible, was argumentative, kept going off on tangents that had nothing to do with my request etc. Yesterday, I had a conversation with another Go bus rider from my neighborhood who sometimes takes that bus to Guelph. She had exactly the same experience with CS.

On her first trip, she drove to the station to catch the bus only to have it pick up passengers at stops along the route. She asked the driver if he would stop at the one near our neighborhood and he said, "You're kidding right? Of course we stop, it's a Go bus stop."

She explained her call to CS and the driver told her they don't know what they are talking about.

Cheers,
Claire
I had a similar experience. I wanted to know how to take a GO bus from Courtice to the Oshawa GO Station - express. I was told to drive to Bomanville and catch the bus at the Kiss and Ride. So ... drive east to go west. Right.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The schedules don't list all the GO bus stops, only the more major ones. Usually the minor stops are local transit stops with GO markings on the signs.

When I used to take the GO bus from a stop near my house, I had to base it on departure from a major terminal + a good 10 minutes (although there was one driver who'd always run 7 minutes early...$#%*@&).

Anonymous said...

hey "Clair", don't label all the CS staff at GO the same way. the majority know how to do their jobs and do it well. next time, have the sense to ask to speak to a supervisor.

C.J. Smith said...

Now, now. True, not all are wrong. Anyone that works in customer service will be prone to having a bad day. We are all human after all. Should this happen to anyone else, let's make it clear they can escalate the call to a supervisor.

Uncle said...

Dear Anonymous #2....it's not our job to ask for a supervisor.....it IS their job to SERVICE the CUSTOMERS and tell them the correct information they are asking for. Otherwise they should take a step up and work for McDonalds.

TomW said...

GO is on Google Transit. Use that to plan your journey.

The paper schedules have maps indicating what streets buses use, but bizarely, thse aren't available online. (Btw, the UoG bus goes along Hwy 7, Gordon St and College St).

(Oh, and from Courtice, you want the 90, which goes along Hwy 2 and down Stevenson. It passes through Courtice betqween 7:07 and 7:11 if you want to catch the 7:53 train).

Uncle said...

Well TomW is obviously not a GO Transit employee.....he's actually helpful.

Anonymous said...

there is a Guelph U bus that connects from York regularly. the schedules posted online don't lie.