To Whom It May Concern -
I just want to share the horrible VRL bus experience that I had this week. On the way back from Bangalore, I had a VRL bus basically kidnap me!
I had a fully paid ticket for a Volvo a/c semi-sleeper 11:15pm bus from Bangalore to Hubli, and arrived at the VRL station more than half an hour early, but the bus to Hubli never arrived. I waited an hour, and when the last bus came, the VRL people started closing up shop. Unfortunately, the VRL stop was on a very sketchy looking street corner and the VRL rep available told me that I had no other options for buses that night because I was "late" (even though I was half an hour early, that didn't seem to matter to him).
I ended up going to the main VRL office in Banagalore to find out waht I could do about my ticket, and a VRL rep told me (rather yelled at me, I should say) to get onto another bus that was waiting there and it would drop me at my correct bus in 10 minutes. He also went up and told the driver this.
The bus that VRL put me on had no seats left so I had to sit on a little ledge in the front of the bus. But I
thought "Ok, this will only be for 5 or 10 minutes, so I don't mind". 10 minutes later, the driver is still riving and when I knocked on the door to find out where he was going to drop me, the VRL conductor locked the door, pulled the curtain, and pulled down his seat to further block the door. I could see that I was still in Bangalore so I wanted to get off the bus and go back to the hotel because they were obviously acting criminal, exhibiting suspicious behavior, and not going to take me to a bus 10 minutes away.
By now, I'm banging on the door like a madwoman, and the conductor just turns around and smirks. I didn't know where I was going or how I was going to get out the bus. I kept banging and the conductor opens the door and then slams it shut again and locks it without saying a word - crazy - and the driver and conductor start making comments and laughing.
I tried to push the door back open but it wouldn't budge and no passengers could tell me the final destination of the bus.
By then, I'm panicking because I had no idea where we going, for how long or far, and the only option was to stay on the bus because we had already gotten to the open road outside of the city limits, and
there would be no place to go if I they dropped me off in a farm village or on the side of the road at midnite.
I ended up being on the bus, on a little ledge in the front, for almost 4.5 hours before the driver finally told the conductor to open the door. They finally begrudgingly told me that they were going to stop in some random bus station along the way in an hour or so; I had no idea where the bus station was and was worried about having to spend the whole night at a small, rural bus station, especially as foreign female alone.
It was only after we got to the random bus station that the horrible driver opened the door and let me off. Fortunately, I was able to catch the one bus going to my destination, ang got on after having been locked in, terrified, and cheated.
This was a very scary situation because the driver and conductor literally locked me onto the bus, with no seat,for 5 hours, and no idea where I was going or what it would be like when I got there, late at night.
Is this how VRL treats its female and foreign passengers? Is this hoe private transportation companies in India oprate? Obviuosly so, and for this reason VRL needs to remove the "Frost & Sullivan Award for Best Practices" from its website; and I will do my best to NEVER use VRL again.
I’m shocked that this could happen on a VRL bus - I thought they were
supposed to be an industry standard, professional and better than the government buses - oh
well, so much for that!
Ms. Lena Thompson
Aug 13, 2020
Complaint marked as Resolved 
If you had checked the ticket before leaving the booking counter there would be no mistake/mis-communication or it can be corrected/changed on the spot