TfL: We Won’t Get You There on Time, But We’ll Charge You Anyway

思然 oce
2 min readMar 25, 2024
Photo by Diego Paez on Unsplash

I’m not sure what’s more frustrating: the fact that the London bus service is constantly late, or the audacity they still charge you the full fare when they drop you off in the middle of nowhere.

Seriously, what kind of service allows you to just stop showing up suddenly? What kind of service allows you to charge your customer still while you fail to provide the service??

Imagine if any other business operated like this: “Your pizza is… on its way… We’re not really sure when it will arrive, we’ll get it to you eventually, whenever we get around to it. We promised it in 10 minutes, but hey, stuff happens, right? We can’t control the ovens, can we? No worries though, you’re already here waiting, so we’ll still charge you full price for the privilege!” Yeah, that wouldn’t fly.

But for some reason, the London bus service gets away with it. Every day, thousands of us are forced to endure the misery of late buses, or buses that simply vanish like a magician’s rabbit.

And what’s the worst part? TfL doesn’t seem to give a damn.

I’ve complained countless times, but they just fob me off with the same old excuses: “traffic problems,” “staff schedules.” It’s not good enough.

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思然 oce

PhD | Research Psychologist | Psychometrician | Computer Science Teacher | IT Auditor/Consultant | ex-CISA/CISSP | Top Writer in Humor | Work in HK, UK, USA