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We have been asked to let as many University of Bath students as possible know that we are running extra buses on the Number 18 route from the city centre to the University between 08:00-08:20, Monday to Friday, to help you get to the University before 09:00.
If you need to be at the Uni by 09:00 and want to avoid the queues, try travelling between 08:00 and 08:20… You can then pop in the library for any last minute reading, or to grab a coffee before your lecture.
We hope this will help! Do let us know how it goes… 
Apologies to any passengers awaiting the Number 5 service on Saturday 25th October.
Unfortunately, the service was diverted following a fatal road traffic accident at Windsor Bridge from the early hours of Saturday morning through to the mid-afternoon. As a result, we were not able to service stops between the city centre and Twerton High Street during this time.
We did resume normal operation as soon as the police opened the road, but we appreciate that there was some confusion for passengers along the route. We can only apologise for any inconvenience caused.
If you have any questions regarding this incident, please comment on this post.
We know that some university students in Bath still do not have a photo on their university NUS card. A valid university NUS card, complete with photo, is vital if you have purchased any of our range of student tickets, including the FirstTerm ticket, or if you want to buy any of our range of student day tickets.
If you don’t have a photo on your NUS card yet, then please visit your Student Union office to chase this up immediately. Our drivers will not be accepting any university NUS cards without a photo after 1st November.
If you have any questions, then please let us know!
Here in Customer Services we appreciate a good, hot cup of tea at the beginning and end of the working day. We know we are certainly not alone!
Many of our customers like to start the day with a hot drink – often picking one up on the way to the bus stop. However, if they haven’t finished it by the time the bus arrives, they can find themselves short of their full caffeine fix for the day.
The reason? Well, for safety reasons, we do not allow hot drinks on board our services. We want everyone to enjoy using our services in comfort and safety, but unfortunately if the bus has to brake suddenly for any reason, a passenger with a hot drink could inadvertantly injure themselves or another passenger sitting nearby. If you board a service with a hot drink, the driver will ask you to dispose of it before travel, to protect both yourself and everyone else on board.
So, might ask: “Do I need to be aware of any other restrictions when I board a bus?”.
Well, hot food is also not permitted for the comfort of other customers… buses are shared spaces, and whilst we recognise that some of our passengers really like take aways, others can be offended by the smell. Hot food can also be greasy, causing stains which can not only affect the cleanliness of the vehicle for the rest of the day, but could also transfer on to another passenger’s clothes.
Finally, alcohol. Open cans/bottles of alcohol that is. This is not simply us being fussy – it is actually illegal to consume alcohol on a public service. Our drivers reserve the right to refuse any passenger who appears to be under the influence of alcohol, again for the safety and comfort of all concerned.
So, there is a basic rule of thumb: if it is hot, or boozy – finish it before you get on the bus. This will help us to make sure our services are safe and comfortable for all of our customers, and avoid any embarressing altercations with drivers.
We are really grateful to passengers for their co-operation on these issues and hope that you will all enjoy using our buses as a result! If you have any questions about these policies, our reasoning, or other issues – please leave us a comment!
You get on the bus, ask for your ticket and fumble around in your wallet for the right money, but find that you only have a £20 note. You present this to the driver, who shrugs and says: “Sorry, I haven’t got any change.”
Unfortunately, this is a problem many of our customers face.
The difficulty is, in order for our drivers to have sufficient change for the first 20 passengers board to board with a £20 note, they would each have to carry around £300 in float. Aside from the impracticality of giving £300 to 200 drivers each day, this would increase the amount of money each driver is carrying by the end of their duty, making them a greater target for attack and theft. In short, unlike a shop (which has appropriate security, storage and extra staff to pop along to the bank to obtain additional change when needed) a bus driver cannot always carry sufficient change.
So, how do we solve this problem for our customers?
In some areas – including London – change is not available on board buses at all. Passengers are expected to pay the exact fare, or loose out. However, we decided that this policy would not be practical for customers in this area, as so many of our routes service more rural areas. We couldn’t use this model locally.
The alternative, high tech, glitzy solution was… the change ticket system! If a driver cannot provide change, they can print you a change ticket for the outstanding amount. You can redeem this from us at the Travel Shop at Bath Bus Station any time within the following 14 days. No arguments; no need to remember at the end of the journey – job done!
Now, we do recognise this system is not without its compromises, like all possible solutions to this problem. Our drivers cannot accept change tickets as payment towards fares following a spate of fraud in the Bristol area… Some passengers find it difficult to get into Bath within the 14 days during opening hours…
That is where Customer Services leaps in! If you have a problem with a change ticket, please contact us and we will see what we can do to help. If your change ticket has expired, we can sometimes reimburse (under certain circumstances) or we can give you advice so you can apply for a refund to our Bristol Head Office.
We can also help you to avoid getting a change ticket in the first place. Plan your journey in advance and contact us via email at bath.csc@firstgroup.com or by calling us on 0845 606 4446, then we can provide you with fare information so you can ensure you have the right money or take advantage of one of our multi-journey or season tickets.
We know that outstanding change can be one more stress to your day that you can do without. With our help, you could avoid the situation arising, or resolve it quickly and conveniently.
Customers often seem quite surprised when we tell them that we investigate all comments made to us here at Bath Customer Services. We have yet to understand why.
Because of this, we thought it might be a good idea to kick off the blog by explaining how we investigate complaints about our services in Bath.
Just so you know…
Our Seven Steps to Customer Happiness (we hope!)
1. We log all complaints on the day they are received. This allows us to keep track of what issues keep cropping up and analyse what’s going on out there.
2. We identify the root cause of the problem – was it a delayed service? was it a service that didn’t operate? was it something a driver did (like failing to stop at a bus stop)?
3. We then get into the nitty-gritty of investigating… We are able to trace each of our services using a combination of allocations information and electronic data recorded by the computerised ticket machines on board each vehicle. Sounds posh doesn’t it? And most of you are probably thinking: “what? those scruffy well used boxes by the driver that look like they could have been salvaged from the ark?”. Yes, those. Believe it or not, those boxes can tell us a lot – almost down to what the driver had for breakfast and what colour underwear he might have been wearing. Ok, maybe not that much information… but close enough! The ticket machines tell us exactly where and when each passenger boarded, the nature of their fare, together with both the start and finish times of the service. Analysing this data can take hours – but it is usually worth it. We can chart how the service operated and resolve any disputes about whether a bus was running early, whether it was full, where delays occurred and so on. We can also usually prove if a bus went the wrong way or did anything else unscheduled, which neatly leads us on to…
4. We interview the driver. Fair is fair, after all, so we do always listen to both sides of the story. Depending on the circumstances, this can be a short discussion with us in Customer Services (where we establish what went wrong, why, and if necessary give the driver further training) or it can be a more formal interview with an Operations Manager, which could possibly lead to disciplinary action.
5. We do a final summary – this involves looking at the results of the investigation and discussing whether there is anything else we need to do/can do to stop the same problem happening again in the future.
6. We produce a written response for the customer.
7. The complaint then gets “logged out” of our system – this involved recording the name of the driver involved and the results of the investigation, again to help us review at the end of each week, and in more detail at the end of each month, so we pick up on any patterns. These patterns get discussed at management meetings to help guide new policies.
As you can imagine, this is not a quick process, so responses can take 7-10 working days. However, it is a thorough process and we try at all times to be as fair and constructive as possible.
Hope that is enlightening! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!
Let’s be clear: if you want information about First, you need to go to our wonderful website, which is packed full of everything you could ever possibly need to know (and quite a bit more besides!). There you will find corporate information, our timetables, terms & conditions, maps, ticketing information, some friendly words from our MD and much, much more…
So why are we bothering to blog?
In the Customer Services Department at Bath Bus Station, we are always looking for new ways to keep in contact with our customers… providing updates about local issues, events etc, and discussing the problems that matter to you so we can work to improve the quality of service you enjoy.
In the coming weeks, we will be blogging about:
- Some of the common problems we encounter (and how you can avoid them!)
- Our top ticketing tips
- Practical advice when using our services (including the answers to those questions you never dared ask…)
- Any operational issues that arise so you know what’s going on (road works, gas explosions, naked people running around the city…)
- and, most importantly, any issues that you ask us to explain. Yes, we will endeavour to answer any queries you might have, even if it is the universal “why do I wait half an hour for a bus, then three turn up at once?” (there is a reason… honest!)
We are really keen to listen to any constructive feedback you, our customers, are able to give. If you have an idea – fire it at us! If we can’t explain why it won’t work in practice, we will pass it on to the powers that be, who can give it serious consideration. After all, if we don’t know, we can’t fix it!
We hope that you will enjoy the blog and find it useful. You will also be able to find us on Facebook and twittering, so there are now more ways than ever to get in touch and stay in touch about the bus services that matter to you.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Welcome to the new Bath Bus Station Customer Service Blog.
Here you can find out more about our operations and have your say to help us improve the service we offer to passengers in Bath.
You will also soon be able to find us on Facebook and Twitter – so stay in touch and enjoy using First buses in Bath!
