Two bus companies

My son is getting married in a couple of weeks time, and about 20 English guests are arriving to partake. This presents a logistical problem. Usually when two or three come over for a visit we pick them up at the airport and drive them about as required.

If we tried to do that with our own cars we'd not do anything else, and I suspect people would get fed up waiting for hours while others got lifts. Public transport is quite good, but rather limited and awkward to and from the airport and pretty well non-existent to and from the Church and restaurant, which are both in the country (on different sides of the town).

We thought it would be a good idea to hire a coach to take us and our guests from the airport to their hotel in the centre of town, and again out to the church, then onto the party and finally home again.

I duly filled in the form on the nearest bus company's web site on 20-feb. We'll call this company B. After a day or so I mailed them in case something had gone wrong with the form (22-feb). I got confirmation that this mail had been read the same day, but still I didn't hear anything from them. At this point I mailed another bus company (company A), based on the other side of town. It took them 40 minutes to mail back with an offer.

Today, 1-march, I got a response from company B. Two things tell me that they don't want my custom. Firstly the price, about twice what company A offered, and of course the fact that they just ignored me for over a week.

Well as you can imagine company A got the order. If you wonder which these two companies are, the labels A & B aren't completely coincidental. The are two main companies here whose first letter just happen to be A & B respectively, so it wasn't difficult to choose pseudonyms.

I think that company B recently got a national order from SJ, the main railway company, for substitute buses for non-running trains. Those of you that live here will guess that that is probably an extremely lucrative contract. SJ is in its second disastrous winter with a very high incidence of train problems, and I don't suppose company B needs my little contract.

I am in principle a supporter of trains, I've still got much of my train set, and intend to play with it when my grandchildren get to an age where they will give me the excuse to get it out! The idea is very good, and I would like to support and use them. However the current reliability of the train service, not to mention the cost, has meant that in recent years I have used other methods of transport when I could have gone by train. If company B's pricing is anything to go by I can see why the trains are so expensive, and am not optimistic about the future of the railway system in this country.