
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:
YouTube.
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