National Express Reviews

"I bought a National Express ticket through their website for travel from Oxford to Stanstead Airport via London on Sept 11. Usually, I travel from the main bus station in Oxford but decided to see whether they ran a bus from the Thornhill Park and Ride on route just outside the city. Sure enough, they let me book it, took my money, and emailed the ticket. I still have the ticket which clearly states the National Express service arrives at Thornhill 8 minutes after leaving the main station.\r\n\r\nI waited at 6am for the bus to take me to an expensive international flight, but it never showed up. Another passenger at Thornhill told me National Express buses don\u2019t stop there and I should take an Oxford Tube bus to London instead, which I did. Luckily, I didn\u2019t miss my flight but it caused me great stress and I had to pay for the journey to London that I had already paid National Express for. \r\n\r\nI filed a complaint and asked for a refund. The response I got from their customer service rep showed a complete lack of understanding of the nature of my complaint. He made it seem that I was complaining about the fact that they don\u2019t service Thornhill. I wasn\u2019t. I was complaining about the fact that they sold me a ticket from a station they don\u2019t service and even deceived me further by giving me the exact time the bus would stop at Thornhill if it was going to stop there, which it wasn\u2019t. Then this person said they sell tickets on behalf of Oxford Tube and told me I should contact Oxford Tube for any problems on their service. There was no problem on their service and this person did not say Nation Express sells tickets on Oxford Tube from Thornhill specifically. If they do, the drivers are not aware of it and there were no signs at the station and nothing on my ticket, which clearly shows it was a National Express service. These people are disgusting."

"On July 3rd, while checking in for my London-Milan flight, I opted to include the National Express coach service from Paddington Station to Stansted Airport through the Ryanair website.\r\n\r\nAn hour later, I received a ticket via email (attached), which showed the date as June 25th. This meant I received an expired ticket, making it impossible for me to use the coach service. Additionally, the ticket date corresponded to my arrival flight, which makes no sense since I purchased the ticket on the day of my return flight.\r\n\r\nI contacted National Express by phone, thinking this would be an easy issue to resolve, but was informed that the correct information should have been sent by Ryanair. Subsequently, I contacted Ryanair, who told me the date was correct, and then National Express again, and so on. Both companies kept passing the responsibility to each other. Additionally, I could not access or manage the ticket on the National Express website as the code was not recognized. Consequently, I was unable to take the bus and had to opt for an alternative route, resulting in an express train that cost me more than twice as much.\r\nAfter reaching out again via email, I received a clumsy response stating that I could not get a refund for expired tickets. It's disappointing and disrespectful (and non sense) that the company fails to acknowledge they sent me a ticket for a date 8 days prior."

"Me, my wife and out 10-month old boy were going from London Victoria courch station to Luton Airport and the journey was disrupted by traffic congestion on 19\/04\/2024 evening. This caused me and my family an overall delay of95 minutes to Luton Airport. According to NationalExpress clock, it was 88 minutes only. Anyhow, it was the last plane to Amsterdam that day and I had to rebook a flight for the 3 of us and a hotel. It cost me around 400\u20ac and NationalExpress says that I should have put 3 hours between the arrival time into the airport and the flight departure time instead of 2,5 hours. Who goes to the airport for an EasyJet flight without check-in luggage before 3 hours? If I had done so, we would have missed the flight anyways, but NationalExpress do not listen to you. They found a reason not to reimburse and they hide behind it. \r\n\r\nThis is not the worst thing yet. They also say that I should have contacted to the Control Centre which would have then advised me on the most appropriate action to take or arrange for alternative means of transportation to your ticketed destination. However, I did called them around the 60th minutes of the delay and they advised me to call EasyJet maybe they can keep the gate open for us. Even we called them, they assume we did not called them all. \r\n\r\nI WOULD NEVER EVER USE IT AGAIN, I WISH I HAVE NOT USED THEM BEFORE"

"Awful experience! \r\n\r\nDue to multiple attempts in contacting the national express complaints and customer service team I have had to resort to writing a negative review as the response to my formal complaint offered barely any resolution. While I was refunded my bus ticket of \u00a35, I am more comparing and giving my negative review over national express\u2019 disregard for patient safety and change of bus departure (which led me to have to pay over \u00a380 for a last minute Uber) and lack of communication\/resolution to my complaint. \r\n\r\nUpdate: response from national express 23-MAY-2023 \r\n\r\n\u201cHaving reviewed your case again, given that we did contact you by email to inform you of the changes despite the email going into your junk folder I am unable to add anything further to my colleagues comments.\r\n \r\nUnfortunately, I am unable to warrant any compensation on this occasion.\u201d\r\n\r\nThis email is upsetting as they did not follow their typical guidelines national express stated to me \u201cWhen we need to change the time or date to the ticket we would normally automatically email new ticket to the email that was provided when ticket was purchased. I'm sorry to hear that this did not happened.\u201c per their response, it is their responsibility to notify customers of the time change with a new ticket. Unfortunately, I was just made aware of the time change however the email was sent from an unknown email! So of course it will then go to my junk. It would be different if the email had come from their official ticket email address as that is an email I would look out for but how should I know to be constantly be checking my junk for a potential national express update from an unknown email! Someone as critical as a time change should be sent by an official email and have an option to acknowledge the change (something airlines do!!). The last thing is the live update said the bus left after I had arrived so regardless of the time change, I should have made the bus due to the bus\u2019s delay. This is another reason why I had missed the bus! I expect a live bus tracker to be updated accurately."

"Awful experience! \r\n\r\nDue to multiple attempts in contacting the national express complaints and customer service team I have had to resort to writing a negative review as the response to my formal complaint offered barely any resolution. While I was refunded my bus ticket of \u00a35, I am more comparing and giving my negative review over national express\u2019 disregard for patient safety and change of bus departure (which led me to have to pay over \u00a380 for a last minute Uber) and lack of communication\/resolution to my complaint. \r\n\r\nUpdate: response from national express 23-MAY-2023 \r\n\r\n\u201cHaving reviewed your case again, given that we did contact you by email to inform you of the changes despite the email going into your junk folder I am unable to add anything further to my colleagues comments.\r\n \r\nUnfortunately, I am unable to warrant any compensation on this occasion.\u201d\r\n\r\nThis email is upsetting as they did not follow their typical guidelines national express stated to me \u201cWhen we need to change the time or date to the ticket we would normally automatically email new ticket to the email that was provided when ticket was purchased. I'm sorry to hear that this did not happened.\u201c per their response, it is their responsibility to notify customers of the time change with a new ticket. Unfortunately, I was just made aware of the time change however the email was sent from an unknown email! So of course it will then go to my junk. It would be different if the email had come from their official ticket email address as that is an email I would look out for but how should I know to be constantly be checking my junk for a potential national express update from an unknown email! Someone as critical as a time change should be sent by an official email and have an option to acknowledge the change (something airlines do!!). The last thing is the live update said the bus left after I had arrived so regardless of the time change, I should have made the bus due to the bus\u2019s delay. This is another reason why I had missed the bus! I expect a live bus tracker to be updated accurately."

"4 hour journey and the bus smells like dust and beer, unacceptable"