There are probably few travelers with as many miles logged on the Madison-to-Chicago Van Galder bus line as Venkat Rao and his wife.
The longtime Madisonians are regular international travelers, taking the bus three to four times a year over the last four decades to O’Hare Airport to embark on their latest excursion.
“My own impression is that Van Galder provides a tremendous service to the citizens of Madison,” he said, with “reliable service.”
That impression was challenged, however, when Rao tried to use a batch of bus tickets he’d been hanging on to since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rao emailed SOS on Sept. 2 to say that in the winter of 2019, he’d purchased several tickets being offered at a discount to UW-Madison students and members of the Memorial Union. He is a union member.
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The tickets came with no expiration date, which probably struck Rao as a good thing once the pandemic hit and mass transit like the Van Galder line was either shut down or scaled back, or came with the possibility of contracting a dangerous respiratory disease for which there was no cure or, initially, vaccine.
Rao said they started traveling again earlier this year, but the tickets “were refused by the driver and I was informed that they are no longer valid.
“I contacted the Van Galder office by phone and by email to no avail,” he said. “I was told that bus company will no longer honor the tickets and no credit/refund was available.”
Rao said he had five tickets that cost him $48 each and didn’t think that the bus company should be allowed to “unilaterally invalidate a ticket that has no expiration date and offer no credit/refund.”
SOS tended to agree, even if Van Galder’s parent company, Coach USA, did file for bankruptcy in June, and on Sept. 5 left a phone message with Coach USA’s PR firm, Joele Frank, and sent an email to the company’s email address for media inquiries.
Joele Frank director Catherine Simon called back that same day, and after a bit of back and forth that included providing Coach USA with photos of Rao’s unused tickets, Coach USA director of marketing Meghan O’Hare said Wednesday that the company had emailed Rao five complimentary Madison-to-Chicago round-trip tickets.
Rao said he and his wife have no travel plans at the moment, but would likely be making some in the next month or two.
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Since September 2007, SOS has helped save Wisconsin State Journal readers more than $254,612.61 and solved hundreds of problems. You can send an SOS using any of these methods:
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Publish date : 2024-09-16 02:00:00
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