Off lately I have observed overall very poor service with this Neeta Volvo Bus especially between Mumbai and Pune
It appears that the maintenance of their Volvo buses is very poor, I have repeatedly noticed some or other breakdown issues, more specifically related to Belts in the Engine system.
Many a times they suddenly stop and say there’s a problem and then start changing some or the other belts in the engine system. It’s not clear it it’s genuine or they just use the travel time to do such things!
Sometime back when such issue happened, driver was hesitant to discuss the issue, finally after 30 mins of wastage he nodded that it was AC belt. We then decided to drop the AC and continue the travel!
Recently a similar problem at Khopoli. Fortunately this time it happened at the crowded place of restaurant post the toll gate, so that at least there was an option of looking for available seats in the other buses and continue. Sadly he kept on saying 10 mins, 10 mins, just 10 mins more which dragged till one hour and then conductor and driver both simply disappeared rather than helping passengers to find available seats in other buses. Finally after wastages of almost 2 hours we managed to get into other buses to reach Pune.
Apart from such things, other regular issues with this service I noticed are…….
Seat related adjustments, what seat number you book in advance and what you get(or asked to sit) when you board the bus may not be the same
Allowing hawkers and other ‘Friends’ of conductor /driver to travel thru the bus
Frequent stops
Water dripping thru the AC ducts on to the seats
Multiple passengers booked on the same seat
Incorrect ‘Schedule’ number entered on the ticket(For them the’Schedule’ number is more important than actual departure Time) then your ticket is actually is booked for a different time than what’s entered on the ticket e.g. if Schedule 11 corresponds to 9:30 AM but if by chance they book you on Schedule 12 while entering 9:30 on the ticket then you are actually booked for the next bus of say 10:30. This creates chaos and confusion when the 9:30 bus arrives
I get a feeling that now on an average the Neeta Volvo travel between Mumbai & Pune takes more than 5 hours @ cost of approx 300 Rs!