Bad service and Poor Hygiene
On Monday the 05/02/2018
The bus was scheduled to leave Johannesburg at 11:00 am to the arrival time was 18:00 at Durban station, the bus was about 15 minutes late. Thats fine we can deal with 15 minutes right? cool. The bus driver starts the bus and the bus doesn't start, he tries again and nothing still, then he tries for the 3rd time and the bus starts. I think nothing on this. We leave Joburg around 11:20am, about 4 hours (15:00) into the trip around the Harrismith area, the bus takes a turn out of route and eventually stops at a petrol station. We stopped for about 20minutes before the driver came and informed us the bus has an oil leakage and its refusing to start, however, they have called out a mechanic. The mechanic arrives approximately an hour later, he gets busy trying to fix the bus. About another hour later the driver comes again to inform us that the mechanic cant fix the bus so they called for another bus but they have no idea if the bus is coming from Durban or Pretoria which didnt matter cause we were halfway so the bus was gonna take 4 hours to get to us either way. The time now is 17:00, after sitting in a roach infested bus for 4 and half hours the back up bus arrives. I was hoping the back up bus will have less roaches but i was wrong it was all the same. We stopped again at montrose and we were offered a steers burger with chips and a can of cold drink for our troubles. When we finally arrived at durban station it was exactly 3:00 am, Luckily I had arrange for my brother inlaw to pick me up. To think about people who were planning to arrive in durban at 18:00 and had no alternative plans for transport, they would have to spend two more hours at the station the wait for taxis to start to operate at 5:00. Intercape does not value time, they should have called the backup bus immediately when the bus didnt wanna start. You can not try to fix a bus while passengers are waiting in it. There is a big chance that you wont be able to fix the bus. I understand that buses break down, however, there should be a step by step emergency plan For such cases and this plan must put passengers comfort first. You can not try to fix the bus and 2 hours later call for a back up bus.