| Address: Plot No : 02-163/NR, Beside METRO Wholesale Supermarket, Suchitra, Hyderabad - 500067, Telangana |
I'm writing to bring to your notice about the horrendous overnight bus journey that I had to take on 21 July 2024 for which I have so far received no appropriate compensation.
My partner and I (Aswath Sridhar & Sruthi Veeraraghavan respectively) had paid a total of INR 3705 and booked two AC bus tickets from Bhimavaram Town (Andhra Pradesh) to Bengaluru, with Orange Tours and Travels, through Redbus.in website.
The bus was supposed to arrive at 5:30pm but it came only at 6:45pm. The seats were uncomfortable, it was torn in places and the dirty bedsheets and curtains looked like it was unwashed for months. An insect crawled onto my seat and I had to brush it off. The curtain rod was faulty and kept falling on my shoulder every now and then and I had to manually keep fitting it back. One of the curtains were missing and when we asked the bus attendant about it he gave us a blanket to use as a make-shift curtain to block the light. But the worst part of the journey only began after we stopped for dinner at around 10pm. Once we got back into the bus after finishing up dinner, we overheard the bus partner say that the AC "wiring" had come off and he could not find a mechanic available to fix it at this time. The driver and the bus partner decided on their own accord to open the main door of the bus and the upper vents near the driver for ventilation and continue with the rest of the journey. Mind you, this is supposed to be an AC bus. The windows are sealed and cannot be opened even if needed. The next 14 hours was hellish. We stopped at around 2:30am for a bathroom break, a lot of passengers were protesting. There were families with children in the bus who also felt suffocated and claustrophobic. The bus attendant was so rude that he said if we have so much of an issue with this, he can call it a breakdown and stop the bus and we can all fend for ourselves. He threatened to leave us stranded in the middle of a highway with nothing in sight at 2:30am. There were women and children in this bus and the staff did not care. We called Orange Tours and Travels and they said that they cannot do anything about the situation considering there are no other buses that they can transfer us to and no mechanic available at this point. They asked us to wait until 10am but our arrival time was 9:15am (we reached our destination only by 11:30am because of the delay). They promised us we will get full refund later but so far we have not received a single rupee. For 14 hours we suffered in that bus. My co-passenger and I were not able to sleep throughout the journey.
We had paid a total of INR 3705 for two AC tickets and what we got in return was one of the worst experiences of our lives. That day we would have made at least 10 calls to Redbus and Orange Tours & Travels for a resolution of our complains, they only kept going in circles and finally agreed only for 30% cashback. Their justification is that we completed the bus ride. How is this fair? Are they telling me that a woman like me should have gotten down in the middle of the night at some highway with nothing around then? A full refund is the bare minimum that they can give us for the ordeal they put us through. But for the mental torture we went through there should be additional monetary compensation and that bus service (AR024651) has to be stopped ASAP so that nobody goes through such an experience ever again.
I also want to register this complaint against Redbus for keeping this bus service active on their website still and not having resolved our query and putting us through a hellish experience both with their unhelpful customer care solutions and overall.
I am attaching all the images and videos I have as proof. Please help.
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