Peter Pan is Trending Way Down

It would have been nice to start off the Trend Board with a cheerful, positive post about something that was trending through the roof.  Something that was so hot you needed to have it in your life yesterday.  Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be.  Instead, I share with you the letter that we wrote to Mr. Peter Picknelly, CEO of Peter Pan Bus Lines, after our awful experience with this pathetic, lame, incompetent bunch of butt faces.

Dear Mr. Picknelly:

Unacceptable.

Unacceptable is the only word that comes to mind as I formulate my thoughts toward my experiences with Peter Pan Bus Lines this fall. Being recent college graduates, my roommate Steven and I decided that it would be a fun adventure to take a trip to Foxwoods on a brisk autumn Saturday. As we looked up ways to get to Foxwoods via bus, we noticed that we were in luck – Peter Pan offers these trips! Awesome! Clearly written on the Peter Pan website, we found all of the details for a $27 round-trip bus special to get to Foxwoods Resort Casino from South Station in Boston, MA.

But you know what, Peter? I tend to stay on the safe side, so I decided to call the Peter Pan customer support line just to make sure I was seeing things clearly. After all, I couldn’t find any option to purchase tickets ahead of time. I wanted to make sure there was no way I could lock up two spots on this bus trip a few days early.

This is what I asked the woman who helped me on the phone (loose definition of “helped”). After waiting fourteen minutes on hold, she specifically told me that tickets could not be bought for this bus trip online, and that the only option was to show up early and pay cash to the driver. Well, that sounds sketchy. But I just spoke to a Peter Pan representative, so surely this must be the correct course of action.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. Steven and I wake up at the crack of dawn to make sure we can get to South Station in plenty of time to purchase tickets and board the 7 a.m. bus to Connecticut. We make our way to the ticket center where there is a huge Peter Pan sign on the wall (accompanied by a Greyhound sign) and we tell the woman working there that we are buying tickets for the Foxwoods bus. Here’s the problem: she tells us, with plenty of hesitation and a general lack of awareness about everything surrounding her, that the bus trip sold out overnight.

Surely that isn’t possible, though. I spoke to a Peter Pan customer representative who told me that tickets could not be bought ahead of time for this trip. Maybe this lady doesn’t know what she is doing. Maybe she is a new South Station employee, and maybe she doesn’t even work for Peter Pan. No big deal. This is a disappointment, but we learn that the Peter Pan customer service desk will open in an hour. It seems odd that they wouldn’t be open earlier than 7:30 when they have a bus trip departing at 7:00, but we can wait around for an hour to talk.

We wait for an hour, and sure enough, the Peter Pan customer service desk opens. Alas, they have finally shown that they possess at least one crucial competency of the job – being present, mentally and physically. Actually, I shouldn’t speak too soon. While they were present physically, I can’t be as confident that they were present mentally.

We get to the front of the customer service line, and we ask for some details about the bus trip that we apparently just missed out on. Maybe there will be more trips throughout the day, right? Well, much to our shock and bewilderment, the woman working at the Peter Pan customer service desk tells us that they don’t have any buses to Foxwoods. For this, she says, we will need to check with Greyhound.

This was the point in time where my IQ dropped by fifteen points or so. That bus trip, clearly advertised on your website and simultaneously described on Foxwoods’ website as well? The customer service reps have no clue what I’m talking about when I ask about it. It’s like it doesn’t even exist. They simply have no clue what I’m asking for.

My head was spinning at this point, and it brought me back to my phone conversation with the customer service line. Did that lady make up everything she told me? She said that we just had to get there a little early. She confirmed that this $27 round-trip bus special was still available. She confirmed that you couldn’t buy tickets ahead of time, and she confirmed that we would have to pay cash, at South Station, on a first-come first-served basis. Where did she get all of this information?

Thankfully, Steven and I were able to take a combination of MBTA and RIPTA (Rhode Island Public Transit Authority) to go to Twin River Casino in Lincoln, RI. It wasn’t Foxwoods, but we were able to salvage some of a Saturday sabotaged by Peter Pan’s advertising. The highlight of the day, perhaps, was that we managed to get to a casino without needing to use the services of a company so painfully incompetent to that point. Thought you would enjoy listening to the story of my wonderful Saturday morning.

Kind regards,
D-Rob and Saint Nich.