Andy of Niall

Never travel naked Posted on 9 October 2007 | Tagged linkin park, auckland, nakedbus, complaint | Comments (7)

A while back me and my sister discovered that Linkin Park was coming to play in New Zealand. Being long time fans, my sister had sworn years ago that if they came she HAD to go, even if it was a thousand dollars (her words, not mine). I quite wanted to go as well and saw it as a good excuse to have a holiday.

Being students on a budget, we decided to travel on the cheapest option available - nakedbus.com, $18 from Wellington to Auckland. I had traveled on this bus service previously, and while they aren't really buses, more refitted vans, and you tend to get some interesting characters on the service (both travelers and bus drivers), you can't pass up an $18 trip.

This time however, things didn't turn out quite so well. On dragging myself out of bed at a ridiculous hour, travelling through the pouring rain to get to the bus stop in town, the bus had yet to arrive. So we waited.

And it rained.

And we waited.

And it rained some more.

And we waited some more.

There were six of us unexpecting vagabonds. Me and my sister, the emo couple, the van girl, and the loner. Emo couple moved around a bit, trying to find shelter at a stop that had none. Loner, well, he was lonesome. Van girl, although sitting in her van was the warmest of all of us, offered us no shelter. She was also the most impatient. After about fourty minutes of waiting, she grew tired, and came over to converse with us. After careful investigation, we found the bus companies number - 0900 NAKED. I thought it was quite checky of them to have an 0900 toll number in the first place, and it sounds a bit like a pr0n number, but the number itself wouldn't work. It seemed it no longer existed. Upon discovering this, van girl decided to turn in and find alternate transport, and so her van escorted her away.

We had a little more paitence, but not much. It wasn't long after that loner went on his lonesome way. After waiting over an hour, we too decided to give up. We were soaked, cold, shivering and tired. We decided the best course of action would be to head to the train station and seek alternate transport. Emo couple gave us a strange inquiring look as we left, as if we had some idea why the bus wasn't there, but we headed off to the train station. Along the way though, Teresa thought the information centre might be able to help us. A kind girl there booked us seats on the overnight bus (although at four times the price of our original nakedbus ticket).

I am now sitting in my sister's bedroom, trying to dry out all my clothes which got soaked in my bag from the rain. We have attempted several times to lay a complaint at nakedbus' website, however they seem to elude all forms of contact. Their contact form doesn't seem to want to submit - it requires you to fill in the 'optional' booking reference. However even once we fill it in, it still doesn't work, in either IE or FireFox. It doesn't provide any form of email address, only a postal address, in which they promise to respond within a month or so.

Let's just say i won't be travelling naked again.