Last Updated on: 13th April 2016, 01:54 pm
Here’s an odd blog post, but we like those.
We’re trying to go to Barb’s house. We heard about this service called megabus.com that has cheap bus fares from Toronto to a few cities in Ontario, Quebec and the states, one of them being the city where Barb lives. So hey, we’re all down with cheap bus fares.
What we’re not down with is a nearly inaccessible website, and that nearly inaccessible website being the only way to buy these cheap tickets. I have tried to talk to the folks at Coach Canada about this being kind of discriminatory, but they won’t listen.
But I’m determined when I want to be, so between Steve and I, we forced that damn site to bend to our will. For other blinks out there, you have to hit space on the add to basket button. That is, if you can tell it which language you speak on the entry page. I have managed to do this prior to today, but Steve and I tried to go in today for the first time on Firefox, and we couldn’t do a thing. Oh, and don’t try and actually type in the outbound date and return date fields. You have to use the calendar to input data into them. And if the calendar doesn’t come up for the return date field, go into the field for a second and then refresh the screen.
So, we got the tickets into the basket. Then we hit checkout, and we were greeted with “bienvenue!” Bienvenue? Uh, why am I having to check out in French? Up to this point, it was all in English. I searched the page for english or anglais, and no, no dice.
So, here’s the reason for this long and winding post. I received an email, in French, saying that I had successfully bought my tickets. But here’s the thing. Apparently Megabus is a ticketless system. You are to present your reservation number to them. The problem is I have two numbers in the email. I have an ID de chariot de marchand and an ID de transaction. Which one of these, do you think, would be my reservation number? Are either of them my reservation number? The email also says that this is not a receipt for goods or services, nor is it a TVA whatever that is, and that that’s all up to Coach Canada, and this is just proof that I had given RBS Worldpay the money.
Has anyone taken Megabus before? Did you have to pay in French? If so, what does a complete non-French speaker do? Some pretty important info is displayed on those payment pages.
And any French-speakers out there, can you shed any light on which number I should print out? I have emailed the company, so we’ll see what they say. Hopefully they’ll tell me what an ID de chariot de marchand is, because I’m dying to know. My chariot awaits, does it?
And as much as I have complained about the Megabus site, I have nothing to complain about when it comes to their fares. 64 bucks return per person going from Toronto to Kingston sure beats the $130 that the train wanted or the $109 that regular Coach Canada wanted. So if you’ve gotta go somewhere, I’d try and take Megabus. Maybe I’ll have something else to say *after* completing the trip, but until then, I’m all for Megabus…if you can slog through their site, that is.