I am a regular traveller from Mumbai/Pune to Hyderabad and mostly prefer train travel. However, sometimes when there’s extra rush and when I need to reach Hyderabad soon I plan to take a bus. Fortunately I’ve travelled with all the bus operators and know the "Ins" and "Outs" of their service.
One name surpasses all when it comes to poor...wait a minute let me correct worst service and that is from "Omer Travels". I have travelled with them on two occasions and my experience was bad to worse. The first time I travelled from Pune to Hyderabad, during 14 August. It being a long weekend and all buses full (even I was away and reached Pune that same morning) I decided to book an online ticket with redbus.in or ticketvala.com. To me I had only one option to travel with omer on both the websites. I was told by many people about the ill-service omer provides but since I had no options I thought why not give it a try. The "A/C Volvo" ticket costed me Rs. 2000 (very expensive) and I was supposed to report to Omer Travels office at Graficon Arcade, Ruby Hall at 9:00 PM.
I was on time and enquired about the bus I was to travel in. The guy seated there saw the print out and threw it back to me stating that they need a xerox and asked me to get one. I was lucky enough to find one shop nearby but what about people who couldn’t. Anyway I took the xerox and gave it to the guy. He rudely told me that it will take time. I thought it would take half an hour more or so but when it was more than one hour I enquired from the guy about the bus. The response I got was that the Bus comes from bombay and that I didn’t know how much traffic would be there en-route and it would take time so just keep my mouth shut and stand there. Anyway I was tired and didn’t want to take up any fights so waited. Finally at 10.45 PM the bus came and then the guy started counting empty seats and tried filling them till 11:15 PM. The seats were very uncomfortable, there was water leaking from the A/C vents, the blankets provided were smelling as if someone vomited in them. When asked about these problems the answer was quietly travel else you’ll be asked to get down because you’re creating a scene. I somehow slept and when I woke up and found the bus moving across small roads in some villages (what I came to know is Omer doesn’t have permits for all their buses, so they route it someway that the RTA doesn’t catch them). After all night of torture I was fortunate enough to reach the outskirts of Hyderabad by 10:00 AM. I chose to get down and take an auto rather than requesting the hooligan drivers to stop for me en-route within the city. A horrifying experience.
We need to learn from our experiences and I didn’t learn from my earlier one and again booked a ticket with Omer from Hyderabad to Bombay. I boarded the bus at 8:00 PM and we were still in Hyderabad till 10.30 PM. Again similar problems on board as listed in the above experience, we reached Pune at 8.30 AM. I was tense now as I had meetings at Bombay at 11:00 AM and the travel agent told me that it would be in Bombay by 9:00 AM. Anyway we reached at 1:00 PM and I had to miss office that day. I held my ears and vowed never to travel by Omer again.
So my dear travellers, better to postpone your journey rather than travelling in Omer. We should discourage their services until they learn to respect the customer.