No communication from the company to customers.

I booked with Intercape on the 12th of October 2022 to take the bus up to Midrand from Uitenhage on the 10th of November. The departure times on my ticket was given as departing at 18:15 from Uitenhage. On the ticket it is requested that you arrive 30 minutes early which was given as 17:45. I arrived at the departure point at 17:30. After waiting until 18:40 I phoned the call center to ask what was going on. I was told that the departure times were changed to 17:20. I was also informed that the call center phoned me, and I quote: "... you were phoned several times but you did not answer.". While on the phone I checked my call log on my phone, I was phoned twice on the 14th of October from the call center number which is ***. Two calls are not "several attempts to contact you". Now in the three weeks prior to my departure I was not contacted again. Not a phone call, SMS or email. As such I missed my bus. I was then offered a seat on a bus that departed Uitenhage on the 11th of November at 12:00. My original booking was made on a Sleepliner but instead I was put onto a Mainliner bus for a very uncomfortable 20 hour long journey from Uitenhage to Midrand. Now the reason behind my trip was to attend a friend's wedding on the 12th. The substituted bus arrived at Midrand at 10:40 on the 12th. Which is a 30 minute delay. I barely made the wedding on time. I lost the money that I paid for my accommodation that I booked for the night of the 11th and I lost the money that I paid for a rental car as well. Thanks to Intercape's non existent customer communication I lost R2000 and nearly missed my wedding as well. From my point of view I really do believe that the company could have sent me a email or made further attempts at contacting me to inform me of the schedule change.

Intercape near ruined my entire trip due to non existent customer communication. I booked with Intercape for this trip because they were recommended to me after a very disappointing journey with a rival company. The aforementioned company's busses were in poor condition and on the journey to Johannesburg we had to endure a broken toilet among other issues. However, every time we reached a pickup point and a passenger was not present the driver contacted his call center to inform them of the missing passenger. Intercape's busses are cleaner and are better maintained but still they struggle to contact their customers.

I will await feedback from the company on this issue and depending on the feedback I might travel with them again but as things stand now I would rather travel on a dirty bus and be on time at my destination than using a clean bus just to be left behind.