Living as I do in a town where I don't work I have the daily commute of an hour to work and an hour home by bus and for years I was using First Bus as they are the main operator of the routes in the Glasgow area but recently McColls buses decided to take on First and I decided to give them a try but will they be about for long?

Well to give a little insight firstly I live about an hour west of Glasgow and when using First buses I was paying about £16 per week for my travel so when I found out that McColls offered a bus for only £12 per week I decided I simply had to give them a try.
Upon walking onto my first McColls bus I was impressed to find that the driver did not have a huge clear plastic wall covering him as with First and discovered that McColls were offering change, another thing that First don't do. The buses on offer from McColls are more modern than First with most of them offering up the lowering floor for those with buggies or mobility problems and the buses are always clean and well maintained.
The staff are all friendly and helpful and the buses run to time well but above all else you feel safe on them. Nobody is forced to stand whereas First buses in this area have people stood to the point you can't move (this is something I have issues with as I can suffer panic attacks due to it).
All sounds great? Well...

As with most things in life not all is perfect. I regularly need to get the bus to work on Saturday for overtime and found issues where the scheduled buses were not turning up so I contacted McColls and told them about this and that I had lost out on overtime money thanks to them. Once I had advised them of this problem they compensated me with 8 weeks of free travel (about the value of overtime I lost out on) and promised to monitor the route which is something that they did...however the bus still does not show up at the stop on the route and so I have had the route monitor have to drive me to work and to meet the bus later on the route.
They have even monitored the driver heading towards my stop, driven to me to say the bus is on the way and when it doesn't show and they phone the driver they found he had just decided to miss out the stop to save himself time which is disgusting.
The buses don't currently operate very early or late in comparison to First and this is something they need to improve on to get more of a grip on the route but even with these problems I am happy to stick with them currently as I know they will get there sooner rather than later.