Cheapest and easiest way to book. (gobycoach.com)

Member Name: MichaelR

Product:	gobycoach.com
Date:	19/09/01 (1525 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: £1 cheaper than at agents, Argos premier points awarded for every £10 spent, Quick and easy

Disadvantages: None that I can see...

Coaches eh? Hmmm, well maybe they’re not the fastest way to get around the country, but I for one object to paying the rip-off prices to travel on dirty, unreliable trains with multiple changes (which usually end up not connecting) and stopovers that are often longer than they should be.

I’ve already noticed that most of the opinions written about National Express (in the travel section) are negative… I have to say that I’ve used them a lot and have only ever once had a problem. The National Express network is, in my experience, much more reliable than the rail network anyway.

I’m sure that everyone has already heard of National Express, but just encase you haven’t – National Express is a network of bus operating companies based in Birmingham. It operates scheduled services to over 1200 destinations in the UK and also has strong ties with Scottish Citylink – who operate most scheduled coach services within Scotland (although there are some Scottish services operated by National Express themselves), Bus Eirrean (Hope I spelt that right!) who operate services in Ireland, and Eurolines who operate services to many cities within Europe.

I think that’s enough about National Express for now, as I’ve already written an op on the company itself and it has its own little section where you can go and read more about the company, if you wish.

Anyway – gobycoach.com is National Express’ website for ticket sales and enquiries. It’s a nicely laid out, easy to use site (that’s looking very green nowadays – but I don’t think I can really criticise them too much for a nasty colour scheme) and there are now incentives to use the site to book rather than booking through an agent.

The homepage has a form located in the top right-hand corner of the page that allows you to easily book tickets in seconds. You can also login or register on the homepag
e if you wish to become a member – more about that later.

Filling in the form on the homepage – with your departure location, destination, outgoing and return dates, and ticket type (single or return) will lead you immediately into the booking screen.

From the booking screen, you will be presented with a list of locations and dates. You can scroll through these to change your mind about destinations etc or dates, or otherwise just hit the continue button to move forward to the journey search screen.

The journey search screen presents you with a list of available coaches on the dates that you requested. There could be only one coach per day in the case of long journeys (e.g. Exeter to Dundee) or many, many choices in the case of shorter journeys, such as Bristol to Cardiff. You will also be advised of any changeover points, although there is usually not more than one changeover - even on long journeys.

If you scroll down from the journey selection boxes, you then come to the fare selection. You can choose standard adult fares, child fares (ages 5-15) or student, young person, or senior citizen fares. The last three fares require coach cards (which can also be bought through the site). Coach cards do represent good value – they cost £9 per year and if you are travelling long distances at peak times, they can even save you more than the £9 cost of the card – as there are extra charges for travelling on Fridays with National Express, as there are always more passengers on Fridays. I think that Saturdays in July and August are also counted as peak time. If you already have a card, you simply enter your coach card number on completion of the transaction.

After choosing your fare types, you hit the “Get Fares” button, and this takes you forward to the fare selection screen. From here you can choose standard or economy fares – always go for the economy as there is no difference apart from
the price. Economy fares aren’t available where travel in either direction is on a Friday though – and there are BIG differences in price on long journeys.

On this screen, you can also choose how to have your tickets delivered. You can either have them mailed to you if your journey is less than two postal days away, or you can pick them up from certain National Express offices. Just click the appropriate radio button and they’ll be ready for you to pick up at your selected office within the hour!

There’s also a new “Virtual Ticket” service. This allows you to pay online and then print your own ticket from the computer – excellent! Just make sure that your printer is in good nick first, otherwise you’ll end up paying and getting no ticket…

On the next screen, you have to enter you card details and your name and address. You then receive confirmation that your card has been billed, and you can print your ticket off if you chose the “Virtual Ticket” option. All this shouldn’t take you more than five minutes from beginning to end.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that for an extra 99p, you can insure yourself against accidents and injury on National Express services. You just tick the box on the fare selection screen.

So then, why should you use gobycoach.com instead of booking at a National Express agent?

Well, there are two major reasons. First off – it’s one whole pound cheaper! Sure, that’s not a great amount of money – but it’s a saving nonetheless. If you book through an agency, they get a commission of 50p each way. You don’t pay that if you book directly on-line.

Secondly, you can now collect Argos Premier Points if you choose to become a member. You can buy tickets without being a member of gobycoach.com – but joining is quick, simple, and easy. They just ask the usual kind of questi
ons that all websites ask when you register with them – and they don’t send out lots of spam, so you may as well join and get the points.

You can also collect points from lots of other places such as BP, Somerfield etc – and they can mount up fairly quickly. You can then redeem these points for items from the Argos catalogues.

The other reason of course is that it’s faster and more convenient than booking through an agent. You don’t have to go to the booking agent, queue for ages, wait for them to look up the journeys on the terminal etc – and you can book at any time of the day or night.

Gobycoah.com is an excellent service to book tickets for the cheapest and most reliable way to travel within the UK. If you’ve never considered travelling by coach before then you may want to head over to the site and compare some of the prices with the equivalent train fare – there are BIG differences in price (up to £60) – especially on long journeys.

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