Stagecoach Bus: Plan>Track>Buy 4+

If I were just reviewing the app then I would give it 5 stars all day long. The rating for the service they offer would be 1 star. The bus will be late 90% of the time. My daughter uses the bus regularly for a 9 mile trip to school and back. She’s quite often left waiting for a bus for 30 to 40 minutes in the cold and the rain. You can see the bus not moving on the app a mile away not moving. Occasionally they will put their out of service sign on as they pass the school kids . But you can see on the app they then stop to pick up other passengers. When we looked at the school Stagecoach had a stand there and they told us how they would provide a reliable service and look after our children. I have complained to the help desk and promised a reply but have never had one and when I ring back they tell me that they have closed the case . Stagecoach you are running a dreadful service in the Eastbourne Hastings area and don’t deserve the contact.

I have recently updated to iOS16 and I have found the app stopped working. I couldn’t use live maps to see when the bus was coming or buy any mobile tickets. I have had to delete the app and reinstall to get it working again but I shouldn’t have had to do this. The app could be better if it showed you the bus cancellations, sometimes it does but not always. Quite often I have been waiting for a bus that the app says is coming but doesn’t arrive. I don’t have Twitter so it’s not really feasible for me to go on Twitter to check the cancellations and I can’t rely on someone who has a Twitter account to check them for me all the time. There are some pluses to this app I can buy mobile tickets and I can check the bus times easily and the live map when it’s working as it should is really good. The app has potential to be really good.

You’d think after paying £20 for a ticket, it would be able to track whether or not that ticket is valid, and only require a daily refresh of its authenticity to minimise network usage. However, if you’re out in the middle of nowhere, with no network reception or WiFi (which the buses don’t have either by the way) then your purchase is basically useless.

The live journey planner - arguably the most important part of this app to get right - doesn’t even show the right times to set off, or for when you arrive. Instead, it prioritises buses and the company over the customer, and shows the times of the bus departure instead - violating almost every design convention travel apps have had in this regard, and leading myself and several others to be late or stranded in the wrong direction.

This app needs a lot of work. It’s quite unfortunate I’m stuck using it for now, or else I would go elsewhere, but they’ve monopolised the routes from my house to work - so go figure.