I travelled by the Shama Travels volvo from Cochin to Bangalore on April 17, 2009. The bus left cochin at 9 PM. After about 5 hours of travel, they stopped the bus after coimbatore woke us all up. We were asked to change the bus to another shama transport volvo waiting at a petrol bunk.
This took about an hour. The bus that left cochin was in better condition and the bus we were asked to board was in bad shape. After 10 minutes of travel they stopped again and there was another Shama transport bus in another petrol bunk !! After fiddling around the engine bays of both the buses, for another half an hour we started again.
Now the air-conditioning had been turned off !!!We spent another suffocating 5 hours in the bus to Bangalore without air-conditioning and closed windows ! We finally reached madiwala Bangalore at 9: 30 AM ! There was no explanation given to us by the driver or anyone from Shama travels and no talk of any refund or compensation either !
They just do not care! It is really sad that these transporters take money in full and then do all sorts of things to evade inter state taxes and give a damn about passengers!! Volvo or even the best buses in the world cannot help alleviate the sufferings of the common Indian traveller because there is nothing called customer service with these third rate transporters/ operators.