Canal & Van Buren — Local services in West Chicago Township

As many other reviewers have commented, this is a 'you get what you pay for' service. Considering that you can travel from state to state for as little as $1 there isn't much room for complaint about the means of travel. Here is where it gets sticky though. Speaking from years of experience, the bus will almost always run late. This can mean your bus won't even arrive to your pick-up station till almost two hours late or that the driver takes a detour to stop at a chicken and waffles restaurant in Indiana just to get a copy of the menu. Either way, you've still hardly spent any money. Now, I've not necessarily lucked out on getting the $1 seats but I can usually manage to get a ride for under $20 each. This is still saving me at least $80 in gas and other wear and tear on my own vehicle. You can sleep on the bus, eat on the bus, get work done on the bus (as long as the FREE wifi is working). You can barely do any of these if you're driving.

Now, in almost every scenario that I've taken the bus, I'd become acquaintances with my neighbor. This may just be because I am an overly friendly person and can strike up a conversation with anyone, but even I will share that I've sat next to someone either smelly or just happened to give me the 'creep' vibe. I still will take Megabus over Greyhound or another similar service any day.

Easter of this past year was one of the worst cases. I'd planned to make a trip home for the holiday using the bus but I never made it out of my departure city. The bus broke down three times in a matter of two hours. They had no buses available for back-up. I eventually just called SOS and had a friend in said departure city pick me up (since we were just stranded on the highway) and I spent the holiday alone. I was fortunate enough to have a warm place to return to. Some of the other passengers (and even the driver) were not so lucky. They had no other option than to wait for either a new bus or for somehow have a miracle-fix on the original vehicle. This was all 100% out of the driver's control and luckily all of the passengers were understanding of that.

Another particularly bad situation was a two hour wait by Union Station outside in the cold in December due to a late bus. That was bad. I survived though, and again, still managed to travel five hours away for under $50.

You have to make of it what it is; you're spending so much less money for a sub-par service. I've said on previous trips while mid-travel that I'd never use MegaBus again but that ends up changing when I think..... "but I can finally visit that family or friend of mine again for only $$."

Make of it what...

I really enjoy the value of the service, the ability to reserve specific seats, and the positive experiences I've had with the drivers and passengers on the bus.

I have one major complaint though. For some reason on both legs of this trip between Dallas and Chicago, the temperature on the bus has either been way too cold or way too hot. When asking the bus driver about adjusting it they say they have to "override the system" and that doing so can get them fired.

If this is really the policy and not just the driver lying because they don't want to adjust it, this is a glaringly flawed policy. If people on the bus are uncomfortable the bus driver should always have the power to fix it. The trip into Chicago was so cold that my traveling partner had to buy a hat and gloves at a rest stop to be able to sleep, and I was so cold I thought surely I was going to get sick. The trip I'm currently on is the opposite. It's uncomfortably hot and no air is circulating. There's no reason for this to be out of control of the person who is operating the vehicle. This seriously cost the review 2 whole stars because being made comfortable on an 22 hour trip is almost the entire purpose of a company like Megabus and if they can't adjust the temperature at the request of the passengers they are partially failing...

If i could give this business 0 stars i would as well. I currently reside in the far west suburbs of Chicago. Upon realizing that the Metra running downtown was running a half hour late i realized i wasn't going to be able to make it to downtown Chicago to catch the Megabus in time. First of all when i visited the Megabus website to find a customer service number there was NOTHING to be displayed other than to write them a message to submit online. I had to google the customer service number just to find out what it was for myself. I called customer service to let them know not only was i going to miss my bus out of downtown Chicago but i asked them if i can push it to a later time and i would pay the difference in price (being that the later in the day the higher the price is.) Do you know what he tells me? I have to purchase a whole new ticket and that basically the 42.50 i payed for the previous ticket is gone. I can't even tell you what i replied here on google because it would be too inappropriate but needless to say i will never purchase a ticket from this service ever again. BTW, i ended up going with greyhound and didn't have a problem with their service at all. It was actually...