seetickets coaches

[Mardy]

Are they any good? the times from London are perfect, but in the back of my mind, I've got something telling me that people had problems with them last year.

So, what's the score, anybody used them? worth a punt or should i carry on looking for other alternatives?

[Sam Crawley]

Are they any good? the times from London are perfect, but in the back of my mind, I've got something telling me that people had problems with them last year.

[Mardy]

Cheers mate

i know I know, but the earliest Nat Exp doesn't leave London till 9am :angry:

ah, f**k knows

[Laura_Babs]

Seeticket = ripoff ticket merchants

Nat Exp = sometimes reliable bus company

Surely it's clear which one has the marginally better chance of getting you there without drama? :angry:

Haven't used the See bus before though so no specific advice to give..

[Mardy]

I want to be there early, Bah!

*sulks*

It's all rubbish, I'm canceling my ticket and staying at home :angry:

[Laura_Babs]

I want to be there early, Bah!

*sulks*

It's all rubbish, I'm canceling my ticket and staying at home :angry:

Edited May 17, 2009 by Laura_Babs

[Mardy]

not really, I'm just having a Sunday morning grump :angry:

[london_ajay]

Putting everything into perspective here... bear with me, LONG post...

I fancied a go on the train last year until I found out that the cost of a return to Castle Cary within 2 weeks either side of Glasto was astronomically increased for no other reason than ripping us fest-goers off. So I decided to go by coach... saw seetickets price and national express price and thought hell, follow the advice of Divine Comedy.

The well-laid plan was to go to Heathrow coach station and meet the same coach that my friends were taking. But as things came to pass, this simple plan wouldn’t pass without its problems.

I arrived early and chilled in the lounge, I called just after the coach left their station to find that they were still there. Also that national express wouldn’t be stopping at Heathrow with their coach after all!.

12.40pm departure time? So it should have been. However as more and more festival people turned up, there was still no sign of any movement. I had another cigarette.

1pm Around this time, My friend told me they were on the coach and that one too wouldn’t be stopping. Meh.

Ok so the coach G1 still hadn’t shown up though by 3pm we were called to coach stop 9. Hopeful, we were greeted by national express staff who were apologising and that there was a promise on a special coach just for us now numbering more than 60. However, it didn’t come without conditions. This coach would materialise after another 2 hours of waiting. The alternative, was a coach to Bristol with a firm promise of a coach which would be waiting for us there. And my decision? Better Bristol now than a maybe! So the coach containing passengers already were turfing out volunteers to take the next Bristol coach in favour of us going to Glastonbury! Big thanks to them.

Finally arrived in Bristol and there, miraculously, was a coach, waiting for us! This driver was the best, really in the mood and played music - loud.

We turned and arrived in what they call the coach station, set foot on the hallowed soil and collected my bags phone in hand to let my friend know I was there. I went through the turnstiles gaining my first wristband.

- THE END -

Are you still reading?

Trying see tickets coach this year...

[Laura_Babs]

Actually....I have a bad coach story which I will tell on behalf of my friend.

This friend is someone who I have been friends with since I was 11 but we drifted apart after school. We got back in touch about three months before last years Glastonbury and I gave her the festival bug. We all already had our tickets except her. She bought hers in about May and had just started a new job. As a result she felt bad taking all the time off so she decided to take just the Friday and Monday as it seemed more reasonable than Wed and Thurs as well.

So she booked a coach down there. On the Thursday she was going to get the bus to the train station (she always gets the bus too and from work). A nice colleague offered to give her a lift to the train station instead so she didn't have to lug all her stuff around. So nice colleague gives her a lift and traffic is really heavy. she arrives at the train station having missed the train by 2 minutes. More trains go from the other train station so she decides to get a tram to the other train station. She gets to other station and hops on a train. By this point her coach is leaving in 5 minutes and she has a 20 minute train journey still and then a 5 minute walk to Victoria coach station! She hopes that the coach will be delayed.

She gets to Victoria and runs to the coach station and the coach has left. To top it off this friend literally has no money on her as she spent the last money on her train fare and gets paid at midnight. So she tries to negotiate another coach but there aren't any. She then calls her mother and begs her to book her a train ticket that she can pick up. So her kind mother books her a train ticket from Paddington to Castle Carey which leaves in 40 minutes!

She still has the problem of getting across London without any money. So she rushes to Victoria and speaks to a London Underground person and tries to explain that if they call her mother, she will pay by card on the phone. The woman is unhelpful and says she needs to find the manager. So the friend manages to find station manager (with no help from woman), lets call him Jeff, who turns out to be lovely! He asks what time her train is and realises that there isn't much time. He lets her through the barriers and tells her to say at Paddington that 'Jeff at Victoria said it was OK to come through'.

She makes it to Paddington, gets on her train and breathes a sigh of relief. She made it and we found her in the pouring rain at about 11pm wondering around in front of the Pyramid in the pitch black.

Needless to say she will be coming by car this year with us, having booked 8 days off work, just to be on the safe side!

[lofichic]

I would say that is technically a London traffic nightmare and no fault of the coaches or public transport in general Heh...

[Laura_Babs]

I would say that is technically a London traffic nightmare and no fault of the coaches or public transport in general Heh...

[rostalof]

Putting everything into perspective here... bear with me, LONG post...

I fancied a go on the train last year until I found out that the cost of a return to Castle Cary within 2 weeks either side of Glasto was astronomically increased for no other reason than ripping us fest-goers off. So I decided to go by coach... saw seetickets price and national express price and thought hell, follow the advice of Divine Comedy.

The well-laid plan was to go to Heathrow coach station and meet the same coach that my friends were taking. But as things came to pass, this simple plan wouldn’t pass without its problems.

I arrived early and chilled in the lounge, I called just after the coach left their station to find that they were still there. Also that national express wouldn’t be stopping at Heathrow with their coach after all!.

12.40pm departure time? So it should have been. However as more and more festival people turned up, there was still no sign of any movement. I had another cigarette.

1pm Around this time, My friend told me they were on the coach and that one too wouldn’t be stopping. Meh.

Ok so the coach G1 still hadn’t shown up though by 3pm we were called to coach stop 9. Hopeful, we were greeted by national express staff who were apologising and that there was a promise on a special coach just for us now numbering more than 60. However, it didn’t come without conditions. This coach would materialise after another 2 hours of waiting. The alternative, was a coach to Bristol with a firm promise of a coach which would be waiting for us there. And my decision? Better Bristol now than a maybe! So the coach containing passengers already were turfing out volunteers to take the next Bristol coach in favour of us going to Glastonbury! Big thanks to them.

Finally arrived in Bristol and there, miraculously, was a coach, waiting for us! This driver was the best, really in the mood and played music - loud.

We turned and arrived in what they call the coach station, set foot on the hallowed soil and collected my bags phone in hand to let my friend know I was there. I went through the turnstiles gaining my first wristband.

- THE END -

Are you still reading?

Trying see tickets coach this year...

[Mardy]

this is not filling me with confidence

[Laura_Babs]

this is not filling me with confidence

[dwukky]

Sad but true fact

a bad experience gets shared 10 times as much as good one

The general consensus was that 2007 was a big cock up - i'll rephrase that - huuuuuuuuge cock up - but it was also its first time trying the new bus system - and to be fair the weather didn't help the atmosphere

2008 went more smoothly - much more smoothly....

another sad but true fact, ticket bookers (by whatever name they use) can only book your ticket - they can't personally be blamed for the "operational" side of the deal - and even the ops managers can't fully be held responsible for a driver thats come to work after having an argument with his other half!!!

neither can the operational side be blamed for a cock up on the ticket booking side and that includes when ticket bookers "over book" which can be common practice.... after all the rule of thumb is that a 56 seat coach will only have 48 on it if 56 tickets are sold - so they generally sell 70!!!

what defines the company is the review of the customer service - how well do they handle and RESOLVE an issue both at the time it occurs and in the way any follow up is conducted.

As has been said, in the majority national express holds "the official" title of company to the festival, others also do provide a service. See's coaches are 'exclusive to see' but have the issue of you can't get NE to resolve the issue (as all they are in this case are a supplying partner to See)

A friend of mine said once, let the festival begin when you touch the ground, and let it end when you step off it..... the getting there and back is an event in its own right

fingers crossed your journey is a smooth and uneventful (bad type) one - if thats what you want it to be!

last word - if theres going to be problems, there will be problems, not a lot you can do other than resolve them as you hit them

[remote]

I didn't get a coach to Glastonbury but I got one home in 2007. 2 of my mates came down on the coach and the return was on Sunday at about 1am. One friend decided he wanted to stay until Monday and get a lift home so I took the spare ticket because I was absolutely cream crackered and my tent was f**ked. There was a massive f**k up at the coach station, no one really knew what was going on or where the coaches were going. When one finally turned up about 3 hours late it was the best thing in the world being able to sleep ont he way home and not have to worry about driving home yourself.

[Mardy]

hmm, maybe I'll hire a car, just seems a waste to pay for it and then it sits in a car park for 4 days.

[Red Day]

Never, ever contemplate catching a SeeTickets 'coach' to Glasto. (The SeeTickets definition of a coach appears to be the type of jallopy that Del Boy and the crew travelled to the Beano in Margate in, complete with authentic diesel fumes).

In 2007 we had no option other than buying combined festival/coach tickets. We were to get the coach from Earls Court at 5.30pm on Thursday. Left at 6.00pm, so not too shabby. But my sis and her fella Dave were due to leave the same place at 6.30. When we arrived at the festival site just before 10 I rang them, only to be told that Dave was just finishing off his sixth can since we left and that they were just leaving London! They eventually arrived at about 2am, we laughed at the day they had and after that we had a wet but wonderful 3 days of festival frolics. Until we attempted to leave!

Sunday 2am was the allocated departure time for our return leg of the journey. We stood in the rain until about 4.45am by which time the crowd had swollen to hundreds of hopeless cases like ourselves who were left in the pissing rain with no shelter and more importantly no buses in sight for nigh on 3 hours. When they came it was an absolute free for all. People clambered over each other to try and get the hell out of there, one or two people were shoved into the luggage hold. We eventually got to London in our freezing cold 'coach', with no dry clothes left, so we shuffled about like tramps until we could check into our hotel. We heard later that some peoples buses never arrived.

After that we swore never to go on a Seetickets coach again. We have all agreed that if we are left with the option of a coach/festival ticket or no ticket ever again we will have to opt for the latter. They are utterly unreliable and damned near spoiled the festival for thousands of people in 2007, it was well documented on the forums at the time. Some people were even talking about legal action!

As I said at the beginning, never ever contemplate traveling with these clowns.

[Red Day]

hmm, maybe I'll hire a car, just seems a waste to pay for it and then it sits in a car park for 4 days.

[Okky]

The score is 5-0 to middlesham

[anx]

hahaha I was trying to figure out the difference between teh see ticket coaches and national express..

The fact that see tickets has little to no information makes me a little bit scared, after reading this thread I'll be going national express for sure...

just a shame I bought my Reading ticket with a coach package damn