Well my friends I rarely complain much, but on this occasion I really have to vent my frustration at what happened to us last night at the bus station in Puno. We arrived half an hour before our bus to Moquegua was due to depart and presented our tickets at the desk of Sagitario transport. The first thing that annoyed us was that the guy was on the phone with his wife and made us wait for over ten minutes, and that already shows poor customer service, as he should have told his wife he had customers and would call her back later. Once the impolite guy at the desk looked at our tickets he said they were not valid as there was no date written on the tickets and that there was no way those tickets had been sold by him or one of his colleagues. The problem was that those seats were already occupied and it seems the travel agency Jumbo who bought the tickets had bought them for the previous night, although because there was no date on the tickets there was no proof of when they were booked for.
Anny and I tried to explain that if the date was not completed on the tickets that was the mistake of his company because it is the bus company who sold the tickets and who must complete them properly. The idiot did not seem to understand this point though, and he just phoned his colleague to ask him if he had sold tickets without a date, and then held up the phone so we could hear his colleague deny it. In his opinion that was proof enough that we had no rights. But to compare this situation with another, it is like someone committing murder then going to court and when asked if he is guilty, phoning his friend in court on loudspeaker and getting his friend to say that he didn't do it and expecting to go free. Sorry but it does not work like that, so we asked to see his boss.
His boss was a little more reasonable, although still disorganised, like the company in general it seemed. I mean they also had issues with other passengers the same night, and had 5 seats booked that they did not seem to know who was meant to occupy them until a few minutes before departure, because once again they had not filled in the tickets fully with names etc. The boss tried to get us on the bus, but there was no chance as it was completely full. She did at least admit that it was partly their fault for selling tickets without a date on them, and partly the fault of Jumbo travel agency as they had requested them on the wrong day she claimed.
Throughout the time we were waiting, which was one hour in total, a representative from Jumbo came to supposedly sort out the situation. He was basically a wet lettuce though, and stood around doing nothing, leaving us to argue with the desk idiot and his boss. He may as well have stayed at home for all the good he was.
To summarise how it all ended, the bus company purchased tickets for us on another bus owned by another company for this morning, and Jumbo took us by taxi to the hotel where we had been staying the previous night. They refused to pay for the hotel though and wanted us to stay in their own sub standard accommodation, so we had to phone the main agency with whom we have dealt the whole trip which is based in Cusco, and get them to agree to pay for the hotel and sort out the mess with Jumbo themselves, as aftterall Jumbo is a local tour operator and we should only have to deal with the agency in Cusco who we booked our whole trip with. The agency in Cusco agreed to pay the costs and now we will shortly be trying to make our way to Moquegua once again, and hoping that nothing else goes wrong, as Anny's family is waiting for us.
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