Bus Fuss
On Friday, Aug. 21, some budget-minded travelers looking forward to cheap weekend bus trips to New York City got some bad news. Patrons of Vamoose Bus, one of several bus services operating between D.C. and Gotham, received the following e-mail: “Due to an injunction against us by Washington Deluxe Bus company, we are suspending operations as of Aug. 22.”
The injunction, which prohibits Vamoose from operating in the District, was the result of several months of legal wrangling between the two companies. The conflict stemmed from the fact that a current Vamoose employee had once been employed by Washington Deluxe; the employee, according to Andrew Citron, the attorney representing Washington Deluxe, is prohibited from working for a competitor.
Vamoose has been operating since February 2004, and owner Sam Bluzenstein says that Deluxe just wants to put him out of business. “They're trying to avoid having competition,” said Bluzenstein, who has hired a new attorney to fight the ruling.
Bluzenstein offered refunds to customers who had their trips canceled, and on Aug. 28, Vamoose reinstated service, picking up and dropping off in Bethesda and Arlington instead of its former Chinatown and Tenleytown locations. Bluzenstein estimates that the change of locations has cut about half of his company's ridership.
Marisa Marchitelli, a former District resident who moved to New York three years ago and uses buses to go back-and-forth several times a year, was one of the more than 1,000 people who had made round-trip reservations with Vamoose and was forced to find another way home.
But that's par for the Chinatown-bus course, Marchitelli says, lumping the injunction in with long lines, crowded, dirty buses, and delays. “The services are unreliable,” she says, “so I often make reservations on more than one carrier.”
—Julia Dahl
9:08 am
look at this
Hello everyone I rode the Washington deluxe several times and there is really one thing I could recommend is STAY AWAY from them they have filthy buses harsh drivers a nasty bitcch in charge that screams and yells like all the passengers where her kids at the age of 2, when the Jewish lady come and tries to be professional it sound like a comedy, A big percentage of the time the buses are late or overbooked with double meaning double the amount of people who fit on the bus staying stranded in DC for hours when you call them its either a answering service or the hold system, when they leave they would not admit they say there is a bus following that’s how you don’t bother for at least 1 hour then when you realize what happened its to late to catch any other bus so you end up paying $89.00 for greyhound or the train. so if you have nothing better to do with your time then you could choose to ride with them or call the Better Business Bureau to report on them, By the way they have 4 different corporations and travel on someone else’s license their names are WASHINGTON DELUXE BUS COMPANY INC. WASHINGTON DELUXE BUS INC. WASHINGTON DELUXE BUS SERVICE INC. WASHINGTON DELUXE COMPANY INC. so what does that tell? Try to file a suit which corp. are you going to file?
6:50 pm
Eastern Travel is HELL!!! The company of thugs stranded over 30 customers at Penn Station who had already waited three hours for a return trip to Washington, DC. Many had already paid. It took a sit-in by angry customers and a call to the police to get Eastern Travel to listen. They wouldn’t answer phone calls from customers, the drivers or the New York Police. This company is a scam!!! Do NOT use Eastern Travel!! Here’s footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ENx7gtrL7k