Dear Folks,
This is my personal experience travelling with KPN Travels and to say the experience was a pathetic one would be a pretty much understatement..
I personally had couple of bitter experiences with KPN travels prior to this but nothing came close to this incident and this left me wondering why did we decided to travel in it the first place...
Last Saturday we (me and two of my friends) were returning from Nagercoil (near Kanyakumari) after attending our friend's marriage..
We started off from Nagercoil by 6.45 PM in an AC Volvo bus of KPN travels, which we had booked...
Everything went fine for a while. The bus was going at a decent speed and we were thinking we would be in Bangalore by 6 AM on Sunday...
Then all of a sudden, the bus stopped at Tirunelveli at 8.15 PM near the KPN office. We thought that they were loading some parcels into the bus.. The bus continue to be waiting till 8.45 PM.. The driver or other staff didn’t tell anything..
Then when we enquired what was happening, the bus driver tells that the AC is not working, because some belt has got cut...
And the driver continues to add, If we continue to travel without AC (which is very much impossible because of the moulded glass windows), the temperature inside the bus might increase and the engine might catch fire.. So they were trying to sort out the issue with couple of mechanics.. These mechanics tried their hands till 9.30 PM and they couldn’t do much about it.
In the mean time many passengers updated the situation to the KPN head office in Salem. They were saying that the issue will be sorted out soon and the bus will start the journey again. They were not thinking of providing any kind of alternate arrangement. Even when some of the passengers asked about it, they were saying that wouldn’t be needed and the issues would be sorted out.
But, until 10 PM the driver and the other KPN staff didn’t tell anything or didn’t even bother to make some arrangements for the passengers for dinner. When some of the passengers shouted at around 10PM, they suddenly realized that the entire bus is hungry..
And they said they will send some mini bus to take the people to a nearby hotel in Tirunelveli town. They did that and after dinner took the passengers back to the KPN office in Tirunelveli by around 11 PM, where the manager of the Tirunelveli office was there.
Seeing the Manager of the Tirunelveli office, the passengers approached him for any updates. He was more interested in clearing of the waiting passengers of other buses. He said they are looking for an alternative may be a Non AC bus or something of that sort and asked the passengers of the bus to travel till Salem and said from Salem some Volvo might be there to drop us till Bangalore. Hearing this, some of the passengers started arguing that KPN refund the money back and they would find their own way, The so called Manager started shouting at the passengers like, as if he was doing some service free of cost.
The manager was saying the refund and all is not at all possible and if at all anybody wanted any refund, then they have to check with the office they booked the ticket. During the whole of the incident, passengers called the Salem head office regularly for any help, but it was of no use. They said something would be done. But no sort of help was in sight...
After all that, the manager kept on holding the passengers without any updates till 12 midnight, when most of the passengers lost their cool and started arguing severely. When some of the passengers told they would call the police, the manager started abusing those passengers with bad words and things were going horrible.
After all these, finally at around 12.30 AM, the manager came and said, he could get only one 17 seater Van for half of the waiting passengers and he would send rest of the waiting passengers in a regular KPN bus on standing to Kovilpatti (a town 50 KMs from Tirunelveli on the way to Madurai) where he said, a 25 seater van is waiting to take all of the people to Salem.
We, the passengers at 12.30 AM had no option other than to take that. Finally the van from Tirunelveli started at 12.45 AM and the other set of people were boarded in a KPN bus bound to Bangalore to be dropped at Kovilpatti and fortunately a van was waiting there for them.
Both the vans started from Kovilpatti at around 1.45 AM and reached Salem at around 6.45 AM on Sunday. We waited for a while and subsequently the Volvo bus to drop us to Bangalore came at around 7.15 AM. We all boarded that bus and it started at around 7.45 AM and we finally reached Bangalore at around 12 noon on Sunday. While getting down the driver of the bus who dropped us at Bangalore told, he came to Salem from Chennai at around 7 AM on Sunday and immediately asked to ferry us to Bangalore. This again took us for a rude shock and all that we could do was thank god for getting us to Bangalore safe and thank our good luck as well.
It was such a pathetic experience, I didn’t expect this to happen even in wildest of my dreams.
I found it very hard to digest the way KPN travels and its franchisee and staff treat customers. We don’t expect a royal treatment but expected a fair concern for the customer at the time of issues like these. But we didn’t even get that.
I have decided from now on, I will never ever travel in KPN Travels to anywhere. Even if I don’t have any booked ticket in train or any other travels, I have decided to chose to go by open ticket in government buses. Atleast in government buses, they refund the fare if the bus breaks down :).
I would request you all to think many times before travelling in KPN travels that too with your family. Only if we start thinking boycotting people like this and they will start feel the pinch the lost business and only then they will really think to care for these things.
NB: In midst of this, we were witnessing another horrible incident right at the Tirunelveli office. Two passengers have booked tickets from Tirunelveli to Bangalore on internet and when they went to board the bus they were in for rude shock, as their seats were already occupied by two other people who claimed to be coming from Trivandrum. The persons sitting in the seats were saying the booking clerk at the Trivandrum office only gave them the seats and they refused to give up the seats. Suddenly one person in Tirunelveli KPN office looking like a goon went into the bus and forcefully pulled the persons sitting in the seats and gave those seats to the ones waiting at the Tirunelveli office. We didn’t know what happened to those two people. This was also such a horrible incident to witness. They had paid close to 1100 rupees each for the ticket. It simply goes on to show the greediness of the KPN booking office. Even the internet tickets are not safe with KPN travels...
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