National express

National Express are vile both as a service provider and as a employer!

I have worked both on the coach division and on the bus side.

Coach division - Start Hill nr Stanstead, Sipson Road nr Heathrow and Crawley depots are all owned operations the rest are franchised to small local operators such as Veolia (now gone), Flights Hallmark who operate the 210 and 777 and Travel de Courcey who operate some London services out of Birmingham.

On the whole National Express treat their staff like dirt and put shareholders before customers.

They are arrogant in the extreme mainly due to holding the monopoly for far to long.

Staff are scum and customers cattle.

The driver attitude comes from the company treating them like retards, their pay is rubbish, they are public enemy number one and hated by passengers, car drivers, lorry drivers, cyclists and generally not supported by the company either.

They are undervalued and paid less for carrying people than a bin-man is for carrying rubbish. (The bin-man's rubbish doesn't answer back either).

National Express drivers are used as scape goats in all situations and should they protest in anyway are swiftly dispatched.

In addition they get treated like a throw away commodity, like just another engine cog or worn out fan belt.

The hours of work are outrageous with no enhanced pay for unsocial hours, weekends, bank holidays etc. They get assaulted (mostly verbal) and abused on a daily basis and of course passengers take much of their frustrations out on them.

Many customers hate National Express because they are incompetent in providing a service, they make excuses instead of correcting errors, they are arrogant in the extreme, the management are incompetent and mainly untrained and they consider themselves never to be in the wrong.

It is always someone else's fault. The attitude seems to be if you don't like it tough!