Coach Tours from Passengers' Homes : An Impracticability.
Page 2
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
ACOMPLAINT of a somewhat unusual character has lately been circulated—one which, because it is unusual, may not be entirely justified—concerning an alleged minor misrepresentation on the part of a motor-coach-operating concern, and it is just as well, in a journal which circulates extensively among coach owners, to deal with it, as the incident which led up to it has its lesson, one which deserves and will well repay study. The complaint is made by a motor-coach passenger who, Da response to an advertisement issued by the motor-coach-operating company, b-ooked seats for himself, wife and child from a London suburb to a seaside resort, to return 14 clays later. The passengers were picked up in the suburb and the first part of the contract was duly performed. On the return journey, however, the coach ran to a West End square and there deposited the whole of its passengers, who were then told that there• was no coach ready to complete the journey and the passengers could not be returned to their respective starting.. points. This obviously entailed inconvenience, expense, delay and annoyance—at least to the particular party of three whose case is the basis of the complaint.
The company, on being approached about the matter, said that they certainly do advertise to run regular daily services, but give no guarantee to return passengers to the places at which they are picked up ; they can only endeavour so to do. Moreover, as the party who complained travelled early in the season, the arrangements for the full procedure had not come into operation.
It scarcely seems necessary to urge upon coach owners the desirability for the exercise of care in the phrasing of the terms of the service which is offered to their patrons, so that there can be no chance of failure to carry out those terms strictly to the letter and in the spirit thereof, and so that no opportunity is given to passengers to profess disappointment or to circulate amongst their friends and acquaintances comments adverse to the motor-coach industry and to its integrity.
It always strikes us as a proceeding verging slightly upon the impossible to offer to pick up iiitending long-journey passengers at their homes anywhere in London and to return them to the same places. Railway companies do not find such a procedure necessary and, except in degree, it would be no more difficult for them to organize such a service than for the coach owners so to do; in fact, it, would besomewhat easier because of the large volume of such traffic and its greater average and constancy. We believe, therefore, that coach owners operating long-distance tours from Loudon would be well advised to fix upon a central terminus for the out-and-home journeys and to give to their passengers the benefit of the economy effected by cutting out the further service into the suburbs.
B18