Don't Take the National Express, Their Site's in a Mess

I had an email last week from National Express, offering me 25% off my next return journey. Since I've never been one to pass up a day in London, I decided to book my journey this morning.

My first attempt ended in disaster when the site wouldn't even load. (Mind you, I was using the piss-poor wifi in Aberdare Library, so I wasn't especially surprised.) The second attempt at logging into the site via the link in the email was slightly more successful. Unfortunately, the site didn't give me the offer of Cardiff University as a departure point.

Cardiff Bus Station closed on 1 August for 'redevelopment', so the National Express services have been relocated to Sophia Gardens. It's about a fifteen minute walk from Cardiff Central Station to Sophia Gardens. National Express expect passengers to be at the departure point ten minutes before the advertised time. That's far too narrow a window when you're travelling into Cardiff by train. The Valley Lines currently put three notorious bottlenecks between you and your final destination. A late arrival in the city would totally bugger your chances of making the connection.

With this in mind, the last time I went to London I booked the return journey from Cardiff University. The coach stop is in Park Place, a minute (or less) from Cathays railway station. I was amazed to find that booking from Park Place would save me three quid on the outward journey and three quid coming back. (In other words, the five-minute journey from the bus station to Cathays costs £3.00 each way.) It also gave me plenty of time to travel down from Aberdare without panicking about making my connection. On the return leg, we were actually back in Cardiff in time for the 2141 departure, which meant that I was in my house just after 11.00. I wish I'd known that last year, when I made my first London trip for a few years. I'd have saved a fair bit of money by this point.

On my second attempt to book my journey, having clicked through from the email, Cardiff University wasn't even available on the drop-down menu. I decided to go directly to the National Express website and copy the voucher details into the appropriate boxes. I selected my date, selected my departure point, and then failed to find any services travelling on that day (a normal weekday). There were coaches leaving the day before, and coaches leaving the following day, but nothing for my chosen date. I closed the site down and logged in again.

After several false starts, I eventually found suitable coaches (£5.00 each way), but there was no provision to enter my voucher code. I decided that saving a mere £2.50 didn't really outweigh the headache of trying to redeem the offer, so I ended up paying the full price.

If National Express really want to attract customers, they're going to have to do a lot of work on their website. At present they're far too concerned with adding 'bells and whistles' than with addressing its basic usability. Customers don't even get to see the full range of fares available until after they've selected their journey time. Only the cheapest fares are highlighted for a particular day, and the coaches which people really travel on are often two or three times as expensive. The lowest fares are all very well if you can travel to/from the city centre at the dead of night, but they're no use whatsoever if you've got a 25-mile train journey at either end.

Many people I know would have just said 'Fuck it!' and booked their journey by another means. If I wasn't signed up for their 'Make ten journeys and get one free' offer, I'd have been tempted to go to the post office and book my ticket there.

But is there any guarantee that the post office's system would have matched the online fares? Would I have been able to use my discount voucher in the post office? Would my over-the-counter booking have counted towards my total. There are too many unanswered questions.

When I first started travelling to London regularly, some thirty years ago, there was one coach every morning from Aberdare direct to Victoria Coach Station, and one back home in the evening. It used to pick up at Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Newport and drop off at Heathrow Airport. At some point the route was tweaked so that it served Merthyr Tydfil, Pontypridd and Cardiff. Now, if you're travelling from the valleys, you've got to make your way into Cardiff (probably by train) before you even get anywhere near the coach.

I was interested to see that the daily Aberdare – Bradford coach doesn't seem to be available via their website. In fact, Aberdare doesn't appear on their drop-down menu at all. Presumably, dropping Aberdare from the website is a precursor to cutting that leg of the route entirely.

I left National Express Customer Services a rather acerbic comment on Twitter. They were sorry I couldn't take advantage of their offer, but wished me a pleasant trip all the same. I doubt whether my feedback will go any further along the food chain.

This is just a friendly warning – if you're planning a coach trip with National Express, regardless of what their advertising materials say, you might not always get the best deal by using their website.