My 19 year old daughter was stranded (staying with friends) in Florida and needed to get to relatives in Kentucky. We agreed to purchase a bus ticket for her and my wife went down to Greyhound to do this.
She told the ticket man what she wanted and said she would take the first available seat, as long as it didn't fall on the upcoming Labor Day weekend. (Week days were cheaper and less crowded.) The man acknowledged this and proceeded to print up the ticket. As he handed my wife the ticket she handed over her credit card and he began processing it. As my wife waited she looked at the ticket and realized it WAS for the holiday weekend, which she had specifically said she didn't want. (Apparently the clerk misunderstood or wasn't paying attention.) She quickly pointed out the error to the clerk, but by then it was too late. He had already processed the credit card. He agreed to undo the transaction and quickly did so.By then my wife decided this guy didn't know what he was doing and told him she would go home and order the ticket on-line, which she subsequently did.
A few weeks later we got our credit card statement and we checked it to make sure we hadn't been charged for the original ticket. We weren't. As promised, it was invalidated. BUT - we WERE charged $34 as a penalty for cancelling a "Confirmed" ticket. We called Greyhound and pled our case. It was, after all, not our fault the ticket clerk sold us the wrong ticket. He even admitted his error and credited the money back to the credit card. We told Greyhound that my wife had not even walked away from the counter before noticing the error. We certainly weren't depriving anyone of that seat. The time between selling the ticket and getting the refund was less than five minutes. It didn't matter, they claimed. It was a rule and it was "written in stone." When we tried to speak with a manager, they rudely hung up on us.
I didn't let this drop. It took me about a month, but I contacted Greyhound's corporate headqarters and explained everything. I told them all they had to do was check their records as to when the ticket was bought and when it was returned and they would clearly see that I was not depriving anyone of that seat. After several phone calls and faxes I was able to nullify the penalty charges on my credit card. Unlike what we had been told, nothing was "written in stone." They just tell you that in the hopes that you'll give up and not press the issue. Still, I didn't appreciate having to jump through all those hoops to get my $34 back. We still use Greyhound, but we buy our tickets over the internet and we double check everything.
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