I recently bought a ‘best of’ CD by a band called The Divine Comedy. A little research told me a well known song by them is called National Express. I checked it out on YT (link below). I think the video would have been funnier had it been set on an actual coach, but the lyrics are hilarious. Here’s an excerpt:
On the National Express there’s a jolly hostess
Selling crisps and tea
She’ll provide you with drinks and theatrical winks
For a sky-high fee
Mini-skirts were in style when she danced down the aisle
Back in ’63 (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
But it’s hard to get by when your arse is the size
Of a small country
Anyway, this got me reminiscing about my own National Express days when, as a student in Leicester, I’d travel by coach for hours to see my then girlfriend in Newcastle. For a laugh, I jumped on the National Express website to see if they still operate that route, how long it takes and how much it costs nowadays. And thus the point of this cunting.
Costing out a return ticket I noticed a booking fee with a little information link next to it. So I clicked that and saw this:
When booking a ticket with National Express, we charge a booking fee which is different depending on the way in which you book:
Using our website – £1.50
Using one of our station’s ticket vending machines – £2
Buying a ticket at the coach station desk – £2
Phoning our contact centre – £3
So to travel with National Express you have to book your ticket and to do that they charge you a booking fee? Isn’t that like Tescos charging you an entrance fee in order to buy their food in their supermarkets? It gets worse as they completely undermine their own justification for doing this. Their explanation continued:
The booking fee helps us to make sure that our website, payment, and booking engines are as secure as possible for our customers. Charging a small booking fee also means that we can constantly invest in new technology to make sure that you get the best experience when booking tickets on our website.
Hang on. They’re choosing to have an online booking system in order to attract more customers 24×7. The cost of that infrastructure is just part of doing business, but they’re charging customers a separate fee to use that booking mechanism. OK then, why not just buy the ticket in person at the coach station ticket counter? Oh wait, there’s a £2 booking fee for that, so what’s that fee paying for? Locks on the staff lavatory doors? ‘Phoning in a booking must be the cheapest option of all, right? Wrong! That’s £3 and here’s why:
For phone bookings, adding a small fee to each ticket means that we have enough staff in our contact centre and coach stations to process your booking as smoothly as possible.
So ‘phone customers are paying for the privilege of calling in new business and subsidising in person coach station transactions which they didn’t use. And finally dear cunters, the icing on their bullshit cake is this:
No Booking fee with My Account: Sign up to My Account for free and save £1.50 on your ticket purchase when you book online.
So if everyone had a free online account to avoid the £1.50 online booking fee, how would National Express, “make sure that our website, payment, and booking engines are as secure as possible for our customers”? Equally, how would they “constantly invest in new technology to make sure that you get the best experience when booking tickets on our website”?
Fucking hypocrites. I’d have more respect for these cunts if their website just said, “We charge a booking fee for no reason other than to boost our profits. We get away with it because this customer fleecing practice is so prevalent now, customers just expect it and pay up. If you don’t like it, fucking walk”.
What other bullshit fees need exposing? Over to you.
Nominated by : Imitation Yank
Back in the day Bikeshed Ange would give you a hand job for a swig of your cider.
Now the greedy bitch is demanding you give her a couple of chips as well.
She’s getting above herself is that one.
18
Never mind the rip off booking fees. the worst thing about National Express , and the reason I would never use it, is that the passengers eat fucking egg sandwiches. How fucking selfish, making the whole buss stink like a fucking shithouse. Fuck off to the moors or the fucking beach if you want to eat that stuff.
Good morning, everyone.
16
PS Please excuse the typos, but this sort of behaviour really makes me see red.
15
What immediately comes to mind is the fee I have to pay,by law,to the council to have my bins emptied.
It’s getting on for £50 a week.
I’ve noticed when passing through more “vibrant” areas that the rubbish is simply thrown over the fence in most cases,making paying for removal quite unwarranted it appears.
It’s all very confusing.
The filthy cunts.
16
More precisely on topic,public transport has never been delightful but has become like a Special Forces selection course in recent years.
Therefore I try to shun it,apart from aircraft taking me on a foreign holiday,which is a trial all of its own.
I wouldn’t dream of going anywhere by coach due to immediate exposure to outright rampant Cunts.
Dear me.
16
Why does any adult use public transport voluntarily? If you work in London I can understand up to a point, though I always drove in and around there. But anywhere I go I just step into the car outside the front door and drive there. If a destination such as a supermarket restricts the parking and/or charges for the privilege I don’t go there. Simple.
With the exception of flying for obvious reasons.
17
PS Unk, I wish we were paying the council £50 a week; passed that milestone some time ago now.
16
I’m paying over £50 a week for my late Mum’s house totally empty and over £75 a week for our house at least they do empty our bin efficiently.
3
Time was Chris no rates were payable on an empty house. Logical really as no services were used or required. Our elected representatives fixed that for us some years ago now.
4
We pay about $32/month for trash collection.
That’s about £23.
That does include the lease/emptying of a large recycle bin which we don’t use and you can’t opt out of that crap which is a cunt. We use it to collect/dump leaves in the autumn. Or the Fall as the Yanks say.
Glad I could help. 🙂
1
The Fall IY?
https://youtu.be/-fpVfyRMaUE?si=8Qun9QmqCHbemXWN
1
Has anyone noticed (along similar lines) websites offering free delivery but include a ‘handling charge’, so they are charging customers for handing the package to the deliver driver.
Be like Tesco charging you for checkout cunt to handle the purchases from the belt to the packing area 😂
16
Mrs Twatt had the misfortune to take a National Express coach from Cambridge to Glasgow once. Several passengers turned up carrying a 1 litre plastic bottle of coke and a half bottle of Bacardi. Each of them tipped some of the Coke onto the street, then replaced it with the Bacardi, and proceeded to drink the lot on the journey.
The 7 hour Journey from Hell, she informs me.
18
The earlier Freedom Passes enabled you to use National Express, before they cottoned on to losing money. They didn’t like that one bit according to Imitation Yank. Glad I was to be that much trouble in the early days.
3
I used to work at Victoria coach station late 70’s to early 80’s. free travel passes for all employees on the old National Express. Happy days😊
16
I’m less tolerant these days due to living alone for years. Other people get on my nerves. I only like traveling on buses when sat next to a lady friend with her hand in my pocket with the inside taken out.
6
Bloody hell. I haven’t been on a National Express coach for years.
I did use them on occasion, when following United up and down the country.
I preferred the train usually. Besides, the train was easier to jib. Going to grounds by rail was all part of the ritual and atmosphere.
Last time I used an Express coach was 1999.
15
Think I’d rather ride on the Marrakech express 😩….
16
That reminds of an old story.
Graham Nash became a pretentious hippy cunt. And he wanted his fellow Hollies to record his song ‘Marrakech Express’.
The Hollies – being hard Salford lads – refused. Nash threw a sulk and told them he was leaving England, the band and his wife to ‘find himself’ and tap into all that California hippy flower people bollocks.
Allan Clarke’s response was priceless. When Nash tod him he was leaving the Hollies, Clarke replied, ‘You’d better fuck off then.’
Classic.
11
Are you Imitation Yank`s old girlfriend in Newcastle, Geordie?
🫡
17
Don’t be offensive SB.
I see IY refers to her in the past tense, which doesn’t surprise me.
I suspect once she’d cracked off a few brown ale and pease pudding blow outs his passion may well have been somewhat dampened.
They’re an acquired taste, are Geordie women.
4
An acquired taste, eh, Geordie. I bet you`ve licked a few in your time. Mind you, I`m assuming Mrs Twatt is also grateful to receive a formidable slurping, on special occasions.
😛
2
Aha! And that’s where you’ve made an incorrect assumption!!!!
My old flame was originally from Oldham and was attending Newcastle Uni. So a northern lass yes, but a Manc not a Geordie.
Checking the Leicester/Newcastle route on the NE website, I was absolutely stunned to see the journey time is about 5.5 hours. Admittedly it was a long time ago (mid ’80s), but I have no recollection of it taking that long. I guess it must have though. It’s amazing what young love and a shag will make you endure, eh?
The more I thought about those salad days, I remembered I actually used to use Yelloway coaches more often than National Express. The train was out of the question – too expensive for a hard up student. NE was way cheaper (but took way longer) and Yelloways was cheaper still. I can’t remember by how much, but they were cheaper. Always stopped in Leeds for an hour or so on the way – which was annoying at the time.
Ahhh….thems were the days. I sometimes wonder what ever happened to her.
3
I believe she is now Mrs Twatt, `IY`. Or, as Geordie would say, `Y-I`.
🚌
4
National express!!
I would rather fly air India, for short trips.
Just drop me off at the end of the runway.
I’ll take my mutton vindaloo to go.
Service charges are the work of the devil.
Order 10 tickets at the same time, get 10 Service charges?
Utter piss take..
20
I once got stranded in Bristol,
A Bank Holiday weekend and had to get a coach up to Manchester.
I was tired and wanted to get home
Not keen for chatting with other passengers i made my way down the coach.
Not many seats left, but there!
Near the back,
Two seats empty.
I sat down and across from me was a sihk bloke crying his fuckin eyes out.
I ignored the cunt.
Waaaaahhhh!!! 😫
The raghead cunt had no shame.
An i made the fatal flaw
” you alright pal?”
The whole fuckin journey back the cunt told me his fuckin family problems.
I tried to politely show he was boring me and that I couldnt give a fuck about his wife.
But hints didnt work.
By the time I got to Picadilly i was in tears myself.
And thats the last time I travelled by coach.
8
Oh my God, that is so sad, MNC. I’ve got a lump in my throat and my eyes are welling up.
Sorry, must go and compose myself…..
3
I was hoping the smelly cunt was blubbing because it was being deported. Very disappointed that wasn’t the case.
3
Don’t be too hard on yourself Mis.
You probably soaked him when you drove the removal van through that large puddle with the crying Sikh man standing next to it years later.
He would understand they believe in karma and all that crap.
3
Ha! You went to Bristol, MNC?
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! 🌈
7
It was rubbish.
2
Beard kink convention, Cunt Engine.
2
I also took a bus up the coastline around there,
Went through Portishead where the triphop band Portishead are from.
It was shite.
https://youtu.be/un8EW82GwKc?si=UZ8I87z_c3KIZaA2
2
How on earth did an Englishman with (presumably) a very northern accent and a bud bud ding ding manage to communicate for even a single sentence?!
You should have had a rummage in his turban whilst he was droning on, MNC.
You know what they keep in there in a secret compartment?
Werther’s original (madrass flavour).
3
Maybe so, LL!
Maybe he was there paying tribute to the ‘king of beards’, Blackbeard, who originally came from Bristol.
Or, as we say in the West Country, “cummd from Brizzle”.
3
Dont be disgusting Cuntengine 😁
2
Disgusting?
What, touching a ramadamadingdong or curry flavoured sweeties?
4
Tell. You what Thomas, those sihks make a big deal about their warrior heritage,
Swanning about in public with those daggers
And avoiding helmet laws with that big hat on,
But this cunt cried for 4hrs straight.
Mard as fuck.
I was embarrassed.
Youd have to chop my fuckin leg off for me to cry like that on a bus.
1
They are robbing bastards
2
I don’t know if this insidious practice has hit the UK, but here in Yankland it’s become more and more common:
Adding the credit card transaction fee to the customer’s bill.
Paying by credit card is very convenient. If your business accepts payment by credit card then you’re more likely to attract more customers compared to only accepting cash/cheque. More customers means more business so you would think the business owners would encourage this. However, the credit card companies (e.g. Visa, AMEX, etc.) charge the business a fee for processing each transaction. The rate varies but 3% is common. That used to be part and parcel of the cost of running the business.
Not anymore!
I’ve seen this in Texas and Minnesota where some restaurants add a 3% “credit card fee” onto your bill if you have the bare faced cheek to pay by credit card. So you are in effect being financially punished for using your credit card. That shit needs to stop. What’s next? Add an extra $5 to the bill to help pay for the restaurant’s insurance? Add another $5 to help pay for their rent? FFS!
Makes you want to go out for a slap up several hundred dollar meal, then pay the cunts using pennies.
6
More and more restaurants here are adding a ‘service charge’ of 10%. 12.5% or even 15% to the bill, the cheeky bastards.
It’s illegal in France. The price you see on the menu is the price you pay.
4
I understand IY that this practice is illegal in the UK and I believe also in the EU.
3
As it should be everywhere, arfur.
Several years ago there was a brief period where buying something using a credit card was more expensive compared to cash/debit card. There was, in effect, a credit card price and a cash price. That BS disappeared over time, but it seems the cunts have found another way to charge people more.
3
My old gran used to call coaches “sharas” =charabanks.
And buses – buzz.
Are you going on the buzz?
Wasnt dementia or anything just outdated regional speech.
Dunno why im telling you this?
Or why youd give a fuck?
Im a boring little bastard.
3
I thought you were auditioning to be the new host of QI..
I’m sure you and Alan Davis will get on swimmingly.
2
😂Ha yeah.
His curly hair would go up like a bonfire.
2
In my youth, we used to call the charabangs. There was many an unlicensed pup born as a result of a near dark return journey fumble, on the back seat, on the way back from a Blackpool day trip!
2
Not at all Mis. The generation above me in Walsall in the fifties used to pronounce it “sharabang” and travelled on the buzzes. Only posh people said bus. And a packed lunch such as my father took to work he referred to as his snap.
2
Yeah, snap.
Dont hear that anymore either.
Language is always changing.
Words die off, fall out of favour.
Whats up with Dave?
” his birds packed him”
Packed-dumped.
Never heard again since about 1983.
1
MNC@ I still use the term ‘ buzz ‘ but not ‘ shara’s ‘, although I know people that do.
That must have been a long tedious journey you had on the buzz, I’ll bet you were ‘ fur clemt ‘ when you got home.
Good evening.
0