Greyhound vs Via Rail

Interesting experience I had this week. So, I needed to book a last minute trip from Ottawa to Kingston. Stupidly I listened to advice and booked on Greyhound as opposed to Via Rail, as I normally do. So, I book a ticket for a particular day and time on Greyhound from Ottawa to Kingston. The price was negligibly lower than Via's would have been. Bizarrely on their website Greyhound tells you that just because you have a ticket for a particular service does not mean you will actually get on that service. It's first come first served. In other words, they might sell the 100 seats on a particular bus 20,000 times and leave 19,900 people in the lurch, they'd find out at the bus station, and Greyhound would try to put them on a 'later service'. Suffice it to say, there was no later service on the day that I planned to travel.

Well, I decided to take my chances. Expecting disastrous service at that stage I wasn't too surprised that the ticket did not actually print when I clicked the relevant weblink (the link was 'broken'). I tried on and off throughout the day, it never worked. Eventually I called Greyound's call centre where some smartie pants told me that I must print off the ticket. I asked him to try himself. He tried (me patiently waiting on my mobile phone), and eventually advised that they had a 'technical problem' (sounds like Air Canada, doesn't it?).

Incredibly, he then told me that he had to cancel my booking. I asked what that meant and he enlightened me me by telling me that he would cancel the ticket and I would get my credit card reimbursed during the next 7-14 days (!!!!), and that I would have to go to the bus station and purchase a new ticket. I asked whether that would mean a higher price, he confirmed that that likely would be the case.

So, everything here is Greyhound's fault. Their technical fault, their ticket cancellation, their requirement to purchase a more expensive ticket while having to wait 7-14 days to get the money back for the ticket they never issued. Does that strike you as possibly a fraudulent business practice? You sell on-line tickets you don't actually have, you eventually cancel them last minute and force customers to purchase a higher-priced ticket. Herewith added to my 'no go' list: Greyhound.

Compare this to Via Rail. I called them and asked whether I could use my Via points (Preference) to book a complimentary ticket for the next train available from Ottawa to Kingston. A pleasant person picked up the phone next to instantly (not the useless 'pick 1 for', 'pick 2 for', 'pick 3 for' that Greyhound keeps you occupied with), confirmed my details, booked my ticket, voila I had a valid booking, all in less than 5 minutes. No hassles, delightfully competent service. Another excellent experience with Via Rail. Love these people!

Beware of Jacob Jensen products

I bought this watch a year or two ago on an international flight. I always fancied Jacob Jensen's simple and clean designs. It's a really nice piece,titanium casing, sapphire glass, basically it's a good quality piece at a - well - good quality price.

Well, here's my warning then to anyone reading this blog: these time pieces have a serious design flaw and Jacob Jensen got to be asked whether he knows and has factored this design flaw into his time pieces as a continuing source of income. The rubber arm wrist lasts just a bit more than a year. So, basically with the close to non-destructable titanium casing and the virtually unscratchable glass you bought a watch that could last for a very long time. How convenient then that Jacob Jensen forces his customers to purchase an expensive new wristband every single year (that's the half-life of these wristband in my experience).

I wrote to Jacob Jensen to complain about this, but duly got embroiled in fights over receipts and warranties. This, of course is missing the point. Say you got a 1 year warranty, that would give you at best one wristband free of charge (or none, if it lasted slightly more than a year). The wristband are designed in such a way that no regular wristband from your local watch dealer would work, it got to be the branded Jacob Jensen wristband.

Clever, hu? Your option is to either throw the thing out after slightly more than a year, or to become a permanent customer for Jacob Jensen's expensive wristband replacements.

For better or worse, I've thrown the watch out, and am getting even by trying to hurt his business just this little bit - by means of this blog posting. Don't buy Jacob Jensen products, there's probably a nasty catch!

Hotels ... gone are the good old days

Umm, not by way of bragging, but I stayed in London during the last few days, in this hotel. There is something mildly disconcerting about the ever growing greed of hotel proprietors. In the good old days if one had forgotten toothpaste, the hotel receptionist would hand over toothpaste to the hotel guest, and the same would be true for other basic amenities. Well, not any longer. The Thistle Hotel that I stayed in had a vending machine in the lobby dispensing even things like headache pills at exorbitant prices (something close to 5 GBP for a couple of aspirin pills). Similarly, I stayed in a Park Inn (the 'budget' version of the SAS Radisson hotel group) in Bochum in Germany a few weeks back and discovered that they aim to rip off their guests by charging the living hell out of them for internet access (a thing you'd get free of charge in virtually every hotel in the USA, no matter how down market). Mind you, even use of the sauna (much advertised as a hotel facility on the internet) requires that one tells the receptionist 30 minutes ahead that one wants to use it so that they'd get it started...

I made the mistake to grab a take-way coffee in the lobby of the Thistle hotel. I realised immediately why they didn't display any prices at all for their paper-cup coffees. They charged 'only' 3.50 GBP for the cup.

So, again, let the buyer beware. I have to say, as far as hotel chains go, my best experiences were made in Holiday Inn's and their upmarket relatives Crown Plaza hotels. No hidden charges, internet access rip-off's and the endless nonsense practised by so many other hotel chains.