Megabus, a love-hate relationship

Man, I love Megabus. If I think ahead enough, I can get a really, really cheap (like $1) ticket to New York City. Down there, I can do lots of stuff, like visit my brother, have fancy dinners, go to weird cupcake bars and shops, and other things you can do in New York City.

But I really do hate Megabus. Aside from the obvious complaints, little room for big people like me, buses never reach the destination at scheduled times, buses not maintained clean all the time, I have a few more specific things, more specifically stories, about why I hate these things so much.

On my last trip down to NYC, which was for the 2011 WFMU Record Fair, I took the Megabus down to NYC. My ticket, round trip, was $20 or something. So I can’t really complain. But, by golly, I can observe! And most of these complaints aren’t about Megabus per sé, but are more like things that happen on Megabus.

This trip, and just about every trip, the person who sits in front of me is always a woman wearing perfume that is just like a trip to the strip club. It never fails. And don’t think I’m getting down on this smell, it’s an ok smell. It works great in the strip club, not so great on a 3+ hour bus ride into a tunnel.

The girl sitting next to this woman for this trip was reading a book, and I swear, in the corner of my eye, I watched them turn the pages, and I didn’t see any paragraph indentations. It was like one big wall of text from page to page. The nosey part of me made sure I found out what the book was; it was On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I’ve never read it, and now never will because I’m intimidated that a book with no paragraph indentations exists.

Generally, the people who sit at the four top tables on the bottom deck of the bus are extremely annoying. On this trip, it was four middle-to-older aged women who were literally planning a tour of Italy, specifically Florence, on the bus. I mean, these women had maps, tour books, smartphones, and everything that you’d use to plan something all laid out on the table. And, as an added bonus, I got to hear them talk about their ideas among themselves and with whomever they kept calling. Yea I know, I had my Beats by Dre Tour earbuds in, and I was blasting episodes of Breaking Bad on Netflix, but even when I switched to gangsta rap, I still heard these women.

The last thing I’m going to complain about is the WiFi on the bus. As far as I can tell the WiFi on the Megabus, when it is working, is completely useless. Since I’m not 3′ 2″ and 40 lbs, I unfortunately won’t fit in a seat with a laptop, so I wouldn’t bring a computer, but when I go through the motions of connecting to the WiFi on my smartphone by authenticating in the browser, it only lets me use the data in the browser. So things like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Google Music, or other app services that would use the data connection, can’t connect to their WiFi. Luckily, I have a 4G-LTE phone, and 4G-LTE currently accommodates enough bandwidth to use these things, but it’s still annoying.

So, anyway, yea I love to travel for cheap, but I guess hate everything about it.


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8 thoughts on “Megabus, a love-hate relationship

  • Keith

    Yeah, I’ve only taken Megabus once. It was the worst experience in my life, and I won’t do it again.

    A twleve hour trip to the city was cut down to about seven hours because of how behind schedule they were. Even though they wanted us back to the bus at the scheduled time –after taking three and a half additional hours to get there– we sat and waited for two hours before leaving anyway.

    Pretty sure one of the wheels was totally destroyed or something, as the bus kept knocking and rocking the entire way too. Stopped three times on the way back to check on it…


  • See-ya Dom

    Honestly, a non Megabus ticket isn’t much more expensive if you book it ahead of time. I’ve heard way too many problems, including deaths, as a result of Megabus. I’ll stick to Greyhound.


  • scsi

    You spied the “scroll edition” of On the Road. The common editions of the book are the heavily edited (1957) versions, and do have paragraphs.


  • Valerae

    I listened to the audiobook of On the Road and it was quite enjoyable.

    I love Megabus stories. I doubt I would ever take it. Amtrak is overpriced, but for the frequency that I use it, it’s convenient and relaxing. Last fall I took the Taconic Parkway down and that was my favorite way of getting down that way (even though our goal was to hop across the bridge and head down to Philly, it was a gorgeous drive!).


  • Jess

    Megabus drivers play their BIG BAD BOOM RAP for all of us for hours. Help! The worst part is that MegaBus has no place for customer comments, they do not care what you, the dirty poor unwashed lowlife, thinks about their buses.


  • Gwen

    You can find places to make comments on their website if you look. they seem to keep changing it every couple of months. Also check their facebook page you may have better luck and it’s more public


  • coniie jones

    Megabus ripped me off and I put in a complaint to BBB NEW JERSEY. Megabus said they would not provide a refund but I pushed them and got it. Frankly had they not have I would have taken them to small claims court. Take your complaint to the BBB, good luck!



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