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| - I recently arranged for an airport shuttle for my teenaged daughter for a weekend trip, using Bell Trans (arranged through Viator). This was, without a doubt, the most horrific experience I've ever had with any airport shuttle, and there is no way I'd ever book with this company again.
Her experience getting from the airport to the hotel wasn't too bad...the driver was rude and incompetent (she notes that she's not the only one on the shuttle who thought so...in fact, when the driver repeatedly failed to call out stops, SHE and a couple of other disgruntled passengers started pointing out the various hotels to people so they'd know where to get off!), and it took more than 45 minutes for what should be a 20 minute drive, but at least she got where she was going. The return trip, however, was a nightmare.
We had received instructions with the shuttle tickets telling us to call 24 hours in advance to make arrangements for the return trip "at least an hour and a half before your flight time." As my daughter sometimes requires assistance getting through the airport, I decided to err on the side of caution and made a 6 a.m. reservation for a 9 a.m. flight. At 6:10 a.m. I got a puzzled call from her: "Mom, isn't it Bell Trans I'm supposed to be on? Because a Bell Trans shuttle stopped here just now, but he told me he isn't going to the airport."
I called Bell Trans and was told it must have been a private shuttle (though my daughter said it was the same kind she rode in from the airport on), and that the general airport shuttle wasn't due until 6:30 (I have no idea why they didn't tell me there wasn't a 6:00 shuttle when I called to arrange the return trip!). No problem...still plenty of time.
6:30 came, and I got another, very worried, call from my daughter. The shuttle still hadn't arrived. What should she do? I told her to give it 10 minutes, and if it still wasn't there, I'd call Bell Trans back.
6:40 came, and still no shuttle, so I called Bell Trans again. They told me the 6:30 shuttle had already left that location (The Fitzgerald), and the next scheduled shuttle was for 7:00. At that point I lost it. I asked them where the shuttle was supposed to pick guests up at the Fitzgerald, and they told me right outside of guest reception. I told them my daughter had been standing there since 6:00 and had only seen one shuttle, the driver of which had said that he wasn't going to the airport. There had been NO other shuttle by. I mentioned that my daughter had a disability that sometimes required extra time in the airport, and that we really NEEDED to get her there at least two hours ahead of flight time. The operator got really snarky with me at that point, and asked why she was traveling alone (I also heard her referring to my daughter as "mentally handicapped" to the dispatcher, which is NOT the case, and definitely not what I told the operator. My daughter is mildly autistic, and sometimes needs help negotiating airport security due to touch-related issues and a tendency to panic, but she is FAR from being "metally handicapped." In fact, she's extremely bright, and had been navigating all over Vegas on city busses the previous day with no problem, and she has been living on her own in San Francisco for nearly nine months.)
Finally the operator came back on and said that the airport shuttle was on its way to the Fitzgerald and would be there in five minutes (Huh? What happened to "just left that location" and "not another one due until 7:00"?).
My daughter did eventually get on a shuttle...at 6:50, after standing outside the hotel for nearly an hour. And she was very lucky in that it turned out her flight time was 9:20, rather than the 9:00 I'd thought it was, as once again it took nearly 45 minutes to get to the airport. But I spend a very tense morning trying to figure out how to get her to the airport, after having gone through the effort of arranging shuttle transport for her (which was supposed to make things easier!), and after having followed all the company's instructions to secure a return trip at the proper time. I am NOT a happy camper, and if we ever find ourselves in a similar situation, I will pay the exorbitant Las Vegas cab rates rather than deal with either Viator or Bell Trans ever again.
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