Britroute.co.uk - BritRoute - Best Way to Go (3.7 of 5 points)

We booked BritRoute for transportation for 10 people with 7 large suitcases and 7 small suitcases to drive us from Newcastle Upon Tyne, England to London, England on 08/14/2024. This is a 6-hour drive. We were told: “Our prices include everything you need for a smooth journey” and “It would be a 16-seater minibus”.
Here are some of my complaints:
• We did not receive the driver's name the night before as we were told.
• No one showed up at the pickup time we had scheduled. We had to call the company a couple of times to find out where the driver was. We were told he was in front of the hotel when he wasn't. The driver was 40 minutes late. There was no identification on him showing that he was from BritRoute which made us a little uncomfortable,
• The minibus did not have a luggage compartment. Instead, the driver piled up all our luggage on top of a few front seats which I did not think it was safe and partially blocked our view.
• The vehicle was not ready. The driver had to stop for gas as soon as we were picked up delaying our trip even more.
• During the trip, the driver kept turning off the A/C. He had his window down. We kept asking him to turn on the A/C. He would turn it on for a few minutes, then off again.
• During the trip he kept on using his cell phone while driving which is not safe.
• The vehicle broke down one hour away from London. The driver contacted ‘his’ company and was more worried that he was not going to be able to return the vehicle on time than with us being stranded. He kept telling us they had called a couple of Ubers to pick us up. He kept speaking to his company is some language that we did not understand.
• Since no Uber showed up and we did not know what was going on with the driver and his non-English conversation with the company, I called BritRout and I was told that they (BritRoute) had no knowledge that we were stranded with a broken vehicle. This is how we found out that BritRoute subcontracted to this other company for the transportation. I am not sure if it was just for our trip or they do this for all trips.
• When no Uber showed up, we question the driver who said no Ubers were available. We could see in the Uber app that there were several available within a 5 minute window. Finally, when we confronted him, he said for us to call the Ubers and he will give us the cash. Since we had contracted with BritRoute, we asked them if we we should do that. They agreed. So we called Ubers to take us into London and the driver reimbursed us with cash. This breakdown lasted an hour, when we should have been on our way within 10-20 minutes if they had really called the Ubers when they said they did.
• After all this, we contacted BritRoute several times to get a partial refund of our money but they refused
Stay away from this company if you do not want any hassles during your travel. When you look at their website and look at all the pictures of their fleet of vehicles, you are impressed; but when they show up it is something different that was promised.
I wished I had read the reviews before I booked them. I booked them the day before and did not have a chance to do proper research.
What you see in the website is not what you get!

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