Butler Motor Transit Inc

Review: On Thursday, Dec. 31, my daughter and I traveled, by way of bus, booked through Butler Tours, to Amish Acres in Indiana. This is about the lack of information provided by both the personal conversations with Butler Tours, and web-site information provided by Butler Tours, to their customers. I hope, through the mentioning of the frustration that I endured, corrections can be made to assure this doesn’t happen to another traveling guest.

The pick-up points provided by and listed on the Butler Tours web site for this trip, were Butler, Kittanning, and Natrona Heights. Of these three locations, Butler is closest to my home, albeit an hour, so I chose that point.

Although “Butler Tour’s” website did state the trip was “Hosted by Gad-About Tours, this statement could have meant several things. There was never anything mentioned, during my conversations with Butler Tours, about transporting to and boarding onto a Gad-About Bus, nor is there anything mentioned on Butler Tour’s web site about transporting to and boarding onto a Gad-About Bus.

Because of this lack of customer information, from either personal conversation between myself and a Butler Tour representative or Butler Tour’s web-site information, I assumed my daughter and I were leaving directly from Butler and either traveling to the other two pick-up points previously mentioned or traveling straight to Indiana, via the same Butler Tour Bus which we left on from Butler. However, my daughter and I alone, were escorted by a van and driven to Akron.

The route on which we traveled from Butler, took us back to the city of Hermitage, (the city in which we live and from which we started this trip) so that we could travel by way of Interstate 80. We have now been on the road two unnecessary hours, one hour to arrive in Butler and one hour to get back to interstate 80, in Hermitage PA. From Interstate 80, located in Hermitage, PA., we traveled to Akron, on the same van in which we left Butler. When we arrived in Akron, we were told we would be exiting the Butler Tour’s van to enter a Gad-About bus. The exchanging of buses was never mentioned before this.

I later learned there were more pick-up locations than Butler Tour mentioned, offered by Gad-About, some of which were located close to my home. Since this tour was hosted by Gad-About, I should have been informed of all Gad-About pick-up locations, either via personal conversations or e-mails or the Butler Tours and Gad-About web-sites. If the pic-ups locations are not on Gad-About's web-site, they should be. If I had been aware of the other pick-up locations offered by Gad-About, I would have been able to make a more informed decision as to where I wanted to drive to be picked up. Having all of the pick-up location information available to me could have helped me make a decision that would have saved me four hours of traveling time (two hours en route to Akron, one hour from Hermitage to Butler and then one hour from Butler back to Hermitage to travel via Interstate 80 to Akron, and then on the return trip, one hour from Hermitage, where we got off Interstate 80, to Butler and one hour from Butler back home to Hermitage). I could have traveled from Hermitage to Akron, and from Akron to Hermitage myself, leaving Butler out of this equation altogether.

When I called Butler Tours several days after returning from the trip, I was told by a representative, I should’ve called and asked about other pick-up locations. I feel it’s not the customer’s responsibility to call, but the company’s responsibility to make all pic-up locations available. After all, when I first booked my reservation, I was given the three mentioned at the beginning of this letter. So how would I know I had to call back and ask if the information given to me when I booked my reservation was complete and correct?Desired Settlement: policies changed, $20 refund for extra gas I used for going out of my way.

Business

Response:

We are responding to your letter of Jan. 18, 2016 concerning ID # [redacted]. We have included a littlehistory on our services so you can see the flow of our business to understand our tour program.Butler Motor Tours is a bus tour company in Butler, PA operating for over 75 years, We offer toursthroughout the country by way of motor coach. Our main pick up iocations for our tours are Butler,Kittanning and Natrona Heights. There are a few tours where we offer Monroeville or Pittsburgh pickupsas well. Unfortunately, Hermitage is not one of our pick up locations on any of our tours.Our sister company, Gad-About Tours is based in Columbiana, Ohio. We do partner with Gad-AboutTours on several tours throughout each year. This allows both of our companies to accept reservationsfor these specific tours, and pick-up our customers at our specified pick-up locations before meetingand transferring all customers to the host company's tour bus. By doing this we are able to offer moretour options to more customers, as well as lessen the number of tours that must be cancelled due tolow passenger counts.When a tour is hosted by Gad-About Tours, the staff at the Gad-About office in Columbiana, Ohiomakes all the tour arrangements at the destination. They also provide the main transportation to andfrom the tour. The joining company, Butler Motor Tours, picks up passengers in their area (Butler,Kittanning and Natrona Heights) and meets the main Gad-About Tour bus. Since this tour was headingwest into Indiana, then Butler would have been our last pick up location.The tour in question was hosted by Gad-About Tours therefore Butler Motor Tours offered this tour toour customers, with our pick-up locations (Butler, Kittanning and Natrona Heights). We then took ourcustomers to meet the main Gad-About Tours bus in Akron, Ohio; which was the last pick-up locationfor Gad-About Tours on this tour. Since we only had two Butler Motor Tours passengers loading inButler, we were able to use our van (instead of a bus) to transport these passengers to Akron, to meetthe main bus, Passenger counts on our combined tours do vary greatly throughout the year.Sometimes there may be only two people and other times there may be 20 or even more, Thepassenger was sent an itinerary letter three weeks prior to the departure which listed only Butler as apick-up location. This was accurate for this tour, as Butler Motor Tours did not-pick up any otherpassengers en route to Akron. On this particular tour we did travel across Interstate 80 into Ohio andcontinued to Akron; however we did not travel through the city of Hermitage, as stated by the customer.Our website listing for the tour in question does specifically state “We join our sister company -Gadabout Tours..." pur tour book also clearly states at the beginning of this tour write up "Hosted byGad-About Tours.” We also have this information clearly stated on our flyer for this tour “(Hosted byGad-About Tours')." When asked bv customers what this means we do apprise them of the informationlisted above. Our website listing also informs the customers that we travel across Ohio and intoIndiana’s Amish country on this tour.Gad-About's website clearly lists its pick-up locations at the top of each tour page to include Akron,Canton, Alliance, Salem and Columbiana, They also have a link after the tour details "Click Here forDeparture Details".All customers are welcome to register for tours with both Butler Motor Tours as well as Gad-AboutTours. Both companies do receive tour reservations from each other’s customers for tours that we donot partner with each other on. If the customer had registered for this tour with Gad-About Tours andpicked-up the bus in Columbiana, they would have been on the Gad-About bus for all of their pick-uplocations to include Salem, Alliance, Canton and Akron:This loop would have taken about two hours.These customers were on our Butler bus for about that same amount of time.We do not compensate customers for gas used to get to one of our pick-up locations. It is verycustomary for passengers to travel a distance to take a tour with us because we do not havedesignated pick-ups in every single passenger's home town. The pick-up-locations are set according tothe direction the tour is heading. The customer traveled about 45 miles from their home to our Butlerpick-up location, which was their choice, They would have traveled about 40 miles from their home tothe closest Gad-About pick-up location in Columbiana, OH; or they would have traveled about 69 milesto Gad-Abouts' last pick-up location in Akron, OH; however Gad-About Tours does not compensatetheir customers for gas either.We do apologize for any inconvenience to the customer; however we do feel as though we provided thecustomer with all the necessary information for this tour, There should be some responsibility on thecustomers’ part in understanding what tour they are booking, and we are always very open withpassengers during their booking process with any questions they may have.