THIS YEAR CUSTOMERS have made a range of complaints about Dublin Bus drivers not engaging with them or being outrightly rude or aggressive.
In documents released to TheJournal.ie under a Freedom of Information request, a number of incidents have been recorded in which members of the public have expressed their anger at their treatment on the buses.
The complaints were made over the course of the past 12 months to the Department of Transportation.
Bad language
Many of these were from passengers alleging they had been the victims of verbal abuse.
In September, one man who suggested that the driver open the middle doors of the bus to clear a congestion of people was not expecting the response he received:
In November the mother of a child who is a wheelchair user made a complaint about a driver.
When the mother asked the driver about passengers standing in the wheelchair area of the bus, he responded by saying: “what the fuck do you want me to do about it?”
In another incident one customer reported that they saw a driver let a passenger off at an area that wasn’t a designated bus stop.
When they flagged this issue, the driver responded by saying:
I couldn’t give a rat’s arse if you report me!
Any other problems?
One issue that was flagged by members of the public was drivers not stopping at all of the stops.
Back in April, one user of the No 9 route who has a serious chest condition and described the bus as his “lifeline to doctors, post office and shopping” said that he had witnessed his bus bypassing the initial few stops on its route before entering service.
In July a Dublin Bus customer described standing out in the rain waiting for a bus to come, only for it to drive past the group of people at the stop when they attempted to flag it down.
Writing into the Department in August another man described waiting for the bus for almost 40 minutes at 11pm at night, only for the bus to drive past him when it finally arrived.
This individual requested that his taxi fare from Westmoreland Street to Finglas be fully refunded.
Another passenger also reported a grievance with not being charged the correct fare – something that she was sure happened because she is Canadian.
In this incident she described being berated by a driver because she had inquired as to whether she was paying the correct fare.
In response to the complaints featured in this article, Dublin Bus stated that it did not disclose information about complaints made directly to it. It aims to deal with customer complaints within seven days when possible.
It also takes complaints through its Twitter page and aims to respond to these within an hour.
We value our customers views and regularly use independent market researchers to audit our performance and customer views. We will continue to research customers’ views on our services now and in the future.
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