I’m not sure how much detail to give on this (don’t want to give others ideas) but yesterday two young ‘ladies’ managed to travel from Brighton to London on ONE ticket. MegaBus don’t have a ‘buy one get one free’ policy so the second traveller effectively stole the journey! I rumbled the scam just after the second one got on and did my best to prove it but the accomplice destroyed the evidence in front of me. They may think they’ve got away with it but since we know the ticket number used we have ways and means of making it difficult for them to use MegaBus again.

This is perhaps a good time to explain why MegaBus passengers who’ve missed their bus can’t catch the next one, or catch an earlier bus if they arrive early. These passengers usually see that there are empty seats on the bus and often get upset at being refused when there is space. This is understandable and I’m sure that they’re decent honest people but not everyone has been honest in the past. MegaBuses don’t have computers on board, each driver starts his day with a print out listing each ticket number on each journey. The passenger shows the driver their ticket number when boarding and the driver ticks it off on the printed list. Here’s the problem, a driver has no way of knowing that someone else didn’t use the ticket number on it’s allocated journey and this second person is trying to get a free ride by saying they missed the earlier bus! The same is true in reverse, if you allow travel on an earlier bus you have no way of cancelling that ticket number on the later bus so again it could be used be a second person. MegaBus discovered that this was actually happening. We used to be as helpful as possible and often allowed early/later travel but the actions of a few ‘thieves’ have put paid to that and spoiled things for the majority.