Shocking lack of ethics of Intercape

My daughter was booked on Route Nr 8035 bus on10 July 2025 that was supposed to depart on 13:50. On 2 July 2025 at 12:59 my daughter got an SMS stating that the bus would leave at 14:35. Yesterday at 2:19 my daughter got another message stating that the bus would be 1 hour and 45 minutes late. As we do not live in Mossel Bay, we sat in the car waiting for the bus from 14:00. The bus got there after 17:00. I called several times in the interim to ask what the problem was with the bus and got the same generic answer from everyone - you do not guarantee the bus times.

Eventually, I got through to Sahmi Nacerodien - he was sure to tell me he is the "Supervisor for the call centre". When I told him that we have been waiting for hours, he told me to read the terms and conditions and inferred that you cannot guarantee the service, as Intercape is only a "transport" company. When I told him that it is unacceptable and that the level of service is shocking, he told me that he did not understand why I was upset at all. It is all in the terms and conditions and that I had to go read it. I told him that I did but surely a better level of service is required when you are a Supervisor for a company like Intercape. He said that I was welcome to report him to the internal department for bad service. Let me be clear, this is the second time my daughter was on an Intercape bus. THAT experience was shocking as well. The bus was late and in the end I had to speak to another manager that informed me that as we booked through "Busbud", Intercape takes no responsibility for delays and changes notifications that is not sent to the client. He suggested I use the Intercape app next time - which we did. It turns out, that was useless in the end as it made no difference to the level of service we received. With my daugthers previous trip, on 4 June from Paarl to Mosselbay, there were passengers standing in the isles that had no seats. I saw this in a facetime call we had myself. The bus was totally overloaded. When I reported this to the same manager, he said he would investigate and get back to me. He got back to me later and said he just spoke to the driver of that bus and they were only loaded to capacity. Ironically, about 10 minutes later the driver's assistant came to tell the people in the isle to come sit in front in his seat... Maybe management at Inercape is not aware what goes on their busses when they are on the road. The long and short is that I was promised that Intercape was a great company with good ethics and dependable. (which is actually a word used in your slogan too...). My experience with Intercape has been anything but good and dependable.

I will NOT allow my daughter to EVER travel on another Intercape bus again. I find their ethics shockingly lacking - if the Supervisor of the Call Centre, Sahmi Nacerodien - is to be believed. A company is only as good as its employees and its systems. Clearly, both of these are lacking as well. Apart from the fact that time, and the wasting of it, seems to be something foreign to Intercape, the "Stops on Route" clearly shows that there is are no stops more than 5 minutes at any of the interim towns between Mossel Bay and Paarl, yet even after the were way past late, the bus made a 20 minute stop again that same night! It seems they are trying to break a record for being late. Because of the shocking lateness of the bus, my daughter only got to her destination at 11:12 last night. The trip I booked for her was scheduled for her arrival at 18:50. This is a total delay of 4 hours and 22 minutes. I have sent 3 emails to Thandokazi Madakane, the right hand (according to him) of the HR head of department. Although I have received "read receipts" from him for all communication, I have not had a single response to date. I cancelled her return ticket on the first email on 11 July 2025 - something which still showed as active this morning...