LimoLiner
Well, it’s the final day of my holiday-cum-business-trip in the USA, and I wasn’t relishing the four-hour journey from Boston back to New York, the long wait at the infamous JFK Terminal 8*, and the cramped overnight flight back to Heathrow.
In fact, last night I was kvetching about this at a whisky tasting that Jen brought me to in Boston. Whether to take the Greyhound bus or the train: each taking roughly the same amount of time, but the bus being far less comfortable and far less expensive. It was suggested that I check out LimoLiner, a luxury bus line owned by former Scottish football mogul, Fergus McCann. For $1 more than the cheapest train ticket, I get a leather seat (in fact, two to myself) and free WiFi. I’m posting this from the bus right now, and believe me when I say that I’m more than mildly excited by this fact! I got a token amount of work done (more than a usual Saturday), and caught up with people back home. There’s a jolly hostess, who served us with snacks, a drink and a surprisingly pleasant turkey sandwich in a ciabatta roll.
Avast! I can see the Manhattan skyline emerge ahead of us, so I’d better sign off. More exploits to follow on my return.
* I don’t want to seem predictable, but you’ll be expecting some airport-related invective on this topic when I get back.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
If you want unreliable transportation…feel free to take the risk. I was scheduled for 6:15pm bus back on Monday and there was no communication from limoliner that the bus was not running at the time. The only reason why I found out that there was no 6:15pm bus was during my conversation with an attendant on duty on Sunday who told me that 6:15pm on Monday was no longer running and for me to check with the office Monday morning.
When I called the office in the morning, customer service had no real helpful solutions for me but to take an earlier bus, get a refund or take the next day service at 11:00am. I then requested to speak to the manager and the manager suggested that I take the train home….
Needless to say, I had to rush through my afternoon meetings to take the earlier bus (to return back to NY again at a later time because I could not finish everything in time). It turns out-Gary Messina who is the VP of sales called me to let me know that limoliner forgot to call people about cancellation due to superbowl game distraction (which is shitty “quote on quote” )and informed me that there was a bunch of people waiting for the bus on Monday night at 6:15pm in NY. I am rather lucky that I was able to find out about the cancellation on my own and make it home…I could have been one of the people standing in the rain waiting for the 6:15pm bus to arrive…
What did the management team suggest as their excellent level of service? 25% off the trip…woohoo~ no consideration for cancellation of my afternoon meetings and causing me inconvenience of rushing through work and feeling stressed that I may not make it home that day. I should have taken acela for the same price and less stress! I don’t recommend limoliner for business travel at all. Now, i have to go back to NY for follow up meeting and that’s a waste of another full day for me because of limoliner’s mistake!