Flixbus has been my No.1 choice of cheap transportation around Europe until recently when their terrible customer service screwed the hell up my travel plans.

Interflix

The trouble started with my order of Interflix, a deal that covers travels to five European cities for only 99 euros. It seemed a perfect choice for my one-month backpacking trip around Europe, but the way Flixbus handled it was pretty lousy. After placing the order, I received five vouchers from the company by email and was pledged to have them activated within 48 hours.  I waited three days to redeem the vouchers just to find only one of them was activated and the rest was invalid. It was alright, probably a technical problem, so I sent a few email inquiries to their customer service division. It took them WEEKS to return my emails and yet they weren’t very helpful.

I finally decided to call their hot line. At first, an English-speaking staff nicely helped me activate four invalid vouchers. Things were smooth then, I redeemed the coupons in my bookings and got email confirmations from Flixbus immediately. But the problem was not over. Three weeks later Flixbus sent me an email (to reply my first inquiry about invalid vouchers) saying that my order had been cancelled due to credit card fraud (??!!). The funny thing is that I had booked Flixbus tickets so many times before with the same card. I sent follow-up emails to ask for explanation and again they dissapeared. It hit me like like they just stopped by to announce the bad news and expected me to suck it up? I had already started the trip by then, having no sim card to call, and because of Flixbus all of my month-long travel plans had to be re-arranged!

A few days later I tried to make other bookings on the Flixbus website (this time separately from the Interflix package, no vouchers involved). Everything seemed fine, the payment was through, Flixbus confirmed my reservations so I assumed there was no problem with my card. But then I was refused to board the bus from Aix-en-Provence to Barcelona (which I paid with Interflix voucher) because my name was not in their passenger list and that the payment was invalid. I called the customer center for a verification, and the teller told me it’s not his problem! ‘Buy a new ticket onboard!’ – he said.

Bus never arrived

The first time this irony happened was on a cold Dec night in Prague when I was waiting for the eight-hour bus to Krakow. The e-ticket said my bus would depart at Prague railway station which sounds a bit weird so I checked the address over the over again, even turned on the GPS, to make sure the location was right.

map.jpg

Anyway I arrived at the station early to explore the area. There were two Flixbus bus stops at the indicated address, situated on two opposite sides of the highway: one would go in the direction to Berlin, Paris and Warsaw (bus stop #3) and the other would go to Budapest, Frankfurt and Krakow (bus stop #4). Mine was the latter. One hour before the departure, I crossed the huge underground station to the other side of  Wilsonova highway to bus stop #4 and waited. Two Russian girls joined me 30 minutes before the bus departure and by talking to them I knew we were waiting for the same bus. But it never came. None of us have a sim card to call the Flixbus hot line which was based in Germany, so I asked G to make a call from Italy, and the answer was that the bus had already departed. Wait..what? We were there the whole time. Until today I still have no idea how it happened, it was still a mystery when or how the bus arrived without us seeing it. After a long email exchange they finally gave a voucher as a compensation WEEKS later, but it was really irritating I had to spend the night in the middle of nowhere, waiting for the next bus and spending the following day transporting to Krakow.

The second time was from Milan to Verona. At 9:00, thirty minutes before departure, I received a text message from Flixbus saying that the bus would be late for ten minutes. Victoria and I were already waiting at a cafeteria just one minute walk from the bus stop so we decided to stay there for a little while more. We showed up at the stop at 9:31. A lot of buses were coming and going. We double-checked with a coordinator about our Verona bus, he confirmed with us that yes, it would be late. So we waited fifteen minutes, then 30 mins, then an hour. Still no clue when, or worse, IF our vehicle would arrive. We called the hot line just to learn that the bus had actually arrived on time and left the station at 9:30!

Ironically Vic didn’t receive the Flixbus message about its ten minute delay until one hour later! Argh!

Everything has a price, I know. But Flixbus customer care has a lot of room to improve. I’ve had enough of their service and decided to try some other alternatives including Euroline and Polskibus which weren’t as bad (in fact, they are both cheaper!)

Good bye, Flixbus!

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Published by Hue Le

Just a Vietnamese with keen interest in life and nature.

22 thoughts on “[Review] Flixbus: a downright disappointment ”

  1. I was waiting for my Bus to Amsterdam from Delft station. It was scheduled at 11 30 a.m on 30 August 2019. I reached Delft station at 10 30. Waited there. It was almost 11 25 and I saw no Bus. I checked the GPS tracking from app and it said the Bus is already going to Amsterdam. I was shocked. I called helpline and they said in their records I boarded bus at 11 22 a.m . I was like what the fuck!! The bus never came to pick me.

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  3. We are Americans who must regularly travel from the Munich Airport to Bolzano, Italy near where we live. We heard good things about Flixbus so we tried to book tickets for this trip from our computer in America. They simply refused our credit card although everything was correctly entered. We did some research and were told they do not accept US credit cards. That can’t be possible, can it? At any rate, we don’t have time for nonsense so we will us the Dolomite Airport Shuttle Service instead. It seems you get what you pay for.

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  4. this was the last time i used flixbus. dangerous driver, misunderstandings by boarding because they do not know qr code, problems with malfunctioning website by booking, problems with getting my money back by cancelling ticket, frustrating email conversation by redeeming voucher. thats it.

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  6. Wow totally same experience even now. I booked, waited for more than 48 hours but the codes are still invalid. The customer service was slow, mostly couldn’t get connected, and only answered two of my calls:

    They asked how many hours had it passed. And then They asked me to send the confirmation payment, and I did.
    They asked me how many hours had it passed, and asked my email, and I waited for around 15 minutes. Then they said my vouchers were already active. I tried to book again, but nothing changed -____-

    Now I’m still stuck, confused either have to wait or book another mode of service. and I plan to bomb the customer service with anger 😈

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  7. I had similiar problems with th interflix vouchers this weekend. They codes werent activated after 4 days (money got already booked of via paypal) and I had to buy all my tickets last minute without the vouchers, which was way more expensive of course. Now I contacted the costumer support for a reimbursement but they only send me already prewritten answers to popular questions, its a joke! I also phoned the hotline, but the lady couldnt activtivate my vouchers either and told me to wrote customer support. Terrible costumer support! Flixbus is like gambling, you never know and usually end up losing money or/and alone on the streets.

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    1. You’re right that Flixbus is nothing but gambling…Some of my experiences were good and some were troublesome. Thing is when you travel on a budget there are not that many choices. Megabus & Euroline are no better… 😦

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      1. By the way, you should claim for a refund or at least a voucher for the next travel. As you as you can justify your problem, Flixbus will give you something as a compensation.

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  8. Hello. Could you tell me the ending of the story about Interflix, please.
    I suppose you used Paypal as payment method, did you finally get back of your 99 euros?
    All of your tickets payed by Interflix voucher have been cancelled or just the trajet from Aix-en-Provence to Barcelona?
    In fact, I’m very interested in this promotion, but i’m afraid of tickets cancelled by Flixbus even if the payment is successful. Il seems that there is a risk of cancellation if customer pays by Paypal. It’s not the first time I heard about this sort of problem. In general I pay by credit card to buy Flixbus tickets, never had a problem. But Interflix accepts only Paypal…
    Thank you.

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    1. They said they never charge, because the payment was invalid! I paid by Master card. Here’s the thing: I booked Interflix for all of my trips but didn’t know the payment unsuccessful until the bus operator told me! Interflix is very risky! But if u book the trips separately, no problem!

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      1. I understand your indignation… They said they never charge, it was real ? or, they charged but said never charge, this is much more scandalous…

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    2. heloo Yuchang, May I know you experience? Have you used this promotion or not? I check now, it uses paypal not directly used cc. Because I’m interesting to use it for next april.

      Btw, thank you for your sharing and nice article 😀

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  9. Pingback: Travel troubles – The Bubbly Traveler

  10. Thank you Vy, to be honest their service onboard is perfect: free wifi with very strong signal, power charging, clean and new buses. You should try at least once before deciding to put them into your travel backlist. 🙂

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