National Express Reviews

1.6 Rating 325 Reviews
13 %
of reviewers recommend National Express
1.6
Based on 325 reviews
Shipping & Delivery
Delivery Methods
Own Driver
On-time Delivery
Greater than 23%
Customer Service
Communication Channels
Telephone, Email, Live Chat
Queries Resolved In
Over A Week
Customer Service
1.7 out of 5
Returns & Refunds
Refunds Process
Difficult
Read National Express Reviews

About National Express:

National Express coach & bus tickets for travel to over 900 destinations throughout the UK including London airports Heathrow, Gatwick & Stansted. National Express offer Britain’s only scheduled coach network reaching around 1000 destinations in England, Scotland and Wales.

Phone:

08717 818178

Location:

National Express House, Birmingham Coach Station, Mill Lane, Digbeth
Birmingham
B5 6DD7

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National Express 1 star review on 24th April 2024
SELMAN AKSUNGER
National Express 1 star review on 23rd May 2023
Anonymous
National Express 1 star review on 23rd May 2023
Anonymous
National Express 1 star review on 9th July 2022
You Bus Smells Like Shit
Anonymous
Anonymous  // 01/01/2019
Passengers, I was going to Stanset airport few weeks ago.I waited in front of the bus for a few minutes for drivers to read my ticket because my trip was important. and I showed the driver my ticket and he let me on the bus... When I arrived, I reached Luton. I was in shock. I had to quickly catch a taxi to get to Stanset because the driver didn't even want to talk to me. Passengers, advice, I believe that you can travel on old NE tickets because the drivers do not read them, or cannot read them, or are not even interested in informing the passenger that this is not the right bus. So my advice is, if you have old tickets or tickets from another city, use them because drivers don't read them anyway.Often the driver is busy putting your luggage on the bus and you can also enter without checking your ticket. I filed a complaint with NE and my taxi fare was not refunded. .NE has stupid regulations that the passenger's responsibility is what bus and where he gets on, the driver doesn't care. This is super irresponsible. So be careful and take advantage of the stupidity of NE and their drivers.Aleksandra
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Posted 5 months ago
Very bad service our location was andheri he dropped us in sion it was very disappointed and disgusting to travel with national
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Posted 5 months ago
The coach travelling from Chadderton to Bradford has extremely poor service. if you are coloured no point of booking the 171 national express coach as the coach driver will see you waving but will still ignore you and drive off. i would recommend women not to waste your time and money. As the 171 coach travelling from Chadderton to Bradford has done this a. few times to other coloured women. national express is only a service unfortunately for white and privileged people, it doesn’t care about others.
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Posted 5 months ago
Terible service. Five hour ride from Leeds to Edinbourgh with no heating in the bus, everyone was in coats the whole trip. Never again, I will rather pay double for a differente service provider or train rather than having to go through this again.
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Posted 5 months ago
A bus 035 Westbourne-London Victoria omitted my bus stop at 2. 17am. Just like that as it was late. I was forced to find another way to get on time to the airport. When I called customer service after holiday I heard lots of excuses. Something like "bus was late 15 min and the tracker shows 2.30 at your bus stop" when I said I waited up to 2.40 they called me back again after 5-10 min and said " the bus was late 30 min and arrived at 2.47" can anyone explain it to me? Horrible experience. Lost case and the fortune spent.
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Posted 6 months ago
1 1/2 hour delay with no explanation. Different excuses made. Put in the wrong queue. If such a delay, give the redcoats a tannoy and let your customers know what’s happening. And apologise for the delay. Told you could only get on if you had a priority ticket?? Just about got on the coach because of the rush. We were lucky to get a seat; some didn’t!
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Posted 6 months ago
My wife and i bought a ticket from heathrow T4 to Bournemouth with National Express after a very long flight. The attendent at the airport came out and declared to the crowd of 30 of us that our coach will not be arriving. He told us that we all will be getting on to the coach to portsmouth and they will be dropping us off in southampton and a further coach will be getting us to bournemouth. We ask for the guarantee of this and he said the national express will never leave anyone stranded i promise. When we got to southampton there was a coach but with not enough room for all of us. 17 of us were left in southampton andf told taxis or a coach will be with us in 5 minutes. the crowd left of 17 people included a family of 5 with a small baby who didnt speak english and anther couple with a baby and 2 young 16 year old girls who were here from switzerland. Without a care in the world for any of these people National Express left us all stranded without anyone turning up after 45 minutes.. We all scrabbled around trying to flag down taxis to arrange transport but when we left there was still a family of 5 left there at midnight. Getting home at 1am nearly 3 hours after we should of was a disgrace. I contacted customer services today and they stated taxis were sent and i advised that was untrue as we were there waiting. I asked to speak to a manager who first said he would refund my ticket and taxi but went back on his word and said later that he would not refund the ticket as he got us half way home. Outrageous.I then asked to go through to the complaints dept and was told that now i had dealt with him then he would not put me through to a complaints dept as he dealt with it. I then asked for the name of the taxi company he said he had paid to collect us . He told me they did not know the taxi company. This is the same taxi company he said they had paid to pick us up that did not arrive but he did not know who they were ???!??! . The fact this company left so many families stranded and offer no apology or damages for this is disgusting. luckily we had good people in the group that helped out the people whose first impression of our country was this disgrace of a company. Like me if you were one of this group contact trading standards and lodge a complaint so this does not happen to other families or youngsters . National Express you should be ashamed !!!!
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Posted 7 months ago
Received an Email from NE stating that on my day of travel, after 11pm at T5 different stops would be in use due to road closures. I was standing at the designated stop ten minutes before departure of the last coach only to eventually connect to their useless App to see it on its way to T3. It had not departed from the stops I was told to use. Then followed a frantic attempt to catch it at T3 by using the midnight departure of the Elizabeth Line, you've guessed it; the train was delayed the T3 travelators were switched off and I missed it at T3 by two minutes. After midnight T3 turns into a scene from the apocalypse with intensive road engineering. Eventually found my way to connect with at taxi. NE customer service have sent several contradictory replies to my complaints none of them accepting responsibility for their misinformation which caused the issue. The term 'customer service' is an oxymoron when applied to National express. The service is good when it works but they are trained to offer a customer disservice when things go wrong.
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Posted 7 months ago
customer service on telephone is unable to give verified information, friendly staff on the telephone who don't know about the details of their job it took 2 weeks to have my problem solved, poor e-mail service, unable to forward and send messages
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Posted 8 months ago
I hope this is of use, particularly for solo travellers. I arrived at Chorlton St bus station at 7.20pm for the 7.40pm to Blackpool. I am disabled and walk with a stick and I'm not good at standing for long periods so I was greatly relieved when upon arrival I saw the station illuminated sign displaying, ' 7.40pm for Blackpool now boarding. Go to Gate C.' I was stuck in a queue for a little while as other coaches were boarding from the same Gate. I finally made it to the coach door and the 2 drivers were engrossed on their phones. They looked most put out that I had come to board. "WE are the drivers and WE tell you when you can board!" said one aggressively. I explained that the display board was stating to go to Gate C as the Blackpool coach is now boarding. "You'll have to go back!" he bawled. Disappointed and somewhat crest fallen I headed back to Gate C. "Not that Gate!" he ordered loudly and indicated a Gate further away. I went through that Gate and got stuck in a long queue as the Birmingham coach was boarding there. My legs were now throbbing and I was in some pain. I got to the Blackpool coach and I was turned away AGAIN even though it was now less than 10 mins to departure. The ill manners were now becoming threatening as he insisted I had to queue yet again. Another queue had been forming outside the station [dangerous?] and I had to join that one. I eventually boarded with less than 5 mins to go. I had been using the train previously but decided to try National Express after all the disruption. I'll go back to the train because at least all the staff are polite and helpful, not threatening, unnerving and bullying.
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Posted 9 months ago
DO NOT under any circumstances book with NE! Wow, how many things can one company get wrong, dirty stinking buses, no working toilets, late pick ups, downright dangerous driving (apparently they bonuses) for each target! NE Driving standards should be seriously questioned by POLICE. myself and my family booked for London, 2 buses there, 2 buses back. all 4 journeys were of the same grubby buses, dangerous driving, questionable driving skills, their drivers people skills were shocking, especially considering their website claiming to out people first????????? Who ever created their website clearly never met drivers or actually used the service, or just took lots of money to tell lots of lies. I'm still waiting for a reply from any member of NE, I used their complaints form, on their complaints page???? clearly this is as usefull as their timetables
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Posted 10 months ago
It was terrible! Our bus 440 was scheduled to leave London Victoria for Derby at 4:30 pm on July 1st. On the day of the trip, National Express first received a message that the bus would be replaced with another one. However, when the time came for the trip, it turned out that there was no bus at all. National Express employees operating other buses told passengers that the bus was delayed and they did not provide any more information. It was impossible to get through to the company's phone number, the company's website was also unavailable. As a result, all passengers of the bus were forced to wait for long hours without any information! As a result, bus 440 was cancelled! We were terribly tired, the baby was crying and we were just lucky that there were still seats on the company's late bus, Megabus, and we finally managed to leave London by spending extra money on bus tickets. I also failed to apply for a refund for services not provided on the National Express website! Shame on you for your complete disrespect for your customers and indifference!
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Posted 10 months ago
I would love to be able to give 0 stars my car was clipped 4 weeks ago by a west midlands national express bus the driver didn't even stop just carried on so I had to turn around and pursue it to get the registration from the time it happened to me phoning them took 5 mins they tried to say the bus wasn't there's so I called there bluff and said I had a photo of the back of the bus with that registration and there logo on remarkably they then found the bus on the system I was told I'd get a call from a company that deals with there accident claims 2 days later I get a letter national express admit fault and offer to give me a hire car and fix my car for FREE a deal I thought to be to good to be true. 4 weeks later and it was they know state there bus didn't do the damage despite there dash cam showing no damage to my bumper before we crossed paths. There trying to imply im the liar
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Posted 11 months ago
Having been advised to pick my coach up at Pool valley Brighton which was the wrong info I missed my flight but they are not willing to refund my holiday even though I clearly had it in writing to pick it up they are now blaming me ? Disgusting company it’s all about the money they don’t care just a greedy bunch of thieves never will I ever use their services anymore
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Posted 11 months ago
Very slow driver, shouldn’t be working at Airports transport
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Posted 11 months ago
Awful experience! Due to multiple attempts in contacting the national express complaints and customer service team I have had to resort to writing a negative review as the response to my formal complaint offered barely any resolution. While I was refunded my bus ticket of £5, I am more comparing and giving my negative review over national express’ disregard for patient safety and change of bus departure (which led me to have to pay over £80 for a last minute Uber) and lack of communication/resolution to my complaint. Update: response from national express 23-MAY-2023 “Having reviewed your case again, given that we did contact you by email to inform you of the changes despite the email going into your junk folder I am unable to add anything further to my colleagues comments. Unfortunately, I am unable to warrant any compensation on this occasion.” This email is upsetting as they did not follow their typical guidelines national express stated to me “When we need to change the time or date to the ticket we would normally automatically email new ticket to the email that was provided when ticket was purchased. I'm sorry to hear that this did not happened.“ per their response, it is their responsibility to notify customers of the time change with a new ticket. Unfortunately, I was just made aware of the time change however the email was sent from an unknown email! So of course it will then go to my junk. It would be different if the email had come from their official ticket email address as that is an email I would look out for but how should I know to be constantly be checking my junk for a potential national express update from an unknown email! Someone as critical as a time change should be sent by an official email and have an option to acknowledge the change (something airlines do!!). The last thing is the live update said the bus left after I had arrived so regardless of the time change, I should have made the bus due to the bus’s delay. This is another reason why I had missed the bus! I expect a live bus tracker to be updated accurately.
National Express 1 star review on 23rd May 2023 National Express 1 star review on 23rd May 2023
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Posted 11 months ago
This is the second weekend in a row I have been let down by National Express. Last weekend, my first bus was one hour late, causing me to miss my connection at Heathrow. I then had to wait over 2 1/2 hours for another bus which turned out to be over booked. This weekend doing the same journey - Our driver from Bournemouth decided to leave five minutes early and had to be called because back to Bournemouth to pick up passengers he’d left behind. This is resulted in a 30 minute delay getting to Heathrow and we arrived just in time to see the coach, they said they would definitely hold for us, drive away. I will just simply never trust National Express again. Your customer service is quite frankly awful, and your service is totally unreliable and not fit to serve the purpose that it is there to provide
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Posted 11 months ago
I tell you what’s a joke. It’s when you pay a 18.00 ticket to get from Luton Airport to Leicester and NE asks for an additional 32.00 to switch to a coach an hour earlier. Value for money indeed. I flew in from Cyprus on a 28 Euro ticket so work that one out
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Posted 11 months ago
National Express Coaches are a joke. On my return from Bath on the 29/4/23 at 20:15, we got into the Bus to find out the toilet was out of use, with the message stating that it was blocked. It is unbelievable that National Express Coaches actually put a bus in service that can be considered Not Fit for Its Purposes as it can't even offer the minimum for their passengers. When I tried to charge my mobile I was disappointed to find out that the USB wasn't working. I tried several seats and none of them had an USB working. People seating next to me also tried several seats without success. When the driver turned the lights off, those who wanted to read their book were unable because the white lights on the ceiling were not working. I requested to the driver to stop in Earls Court, as I knew the company has a stop there before heading to Victoria. The driver told me that it would not be a problem. When the driver turned the bus from CromWell Road into Warwick Road I got my things to leave. He even stopped for a few seconds almost in front of the station. I could just literally cross the street to it, but then he proceeded without opening the door. I asked him where he would open the door, and he told me just a couple of streets away, and drove for another 10 minutes until Albert Bridge Road, near Chelsea and tried to convince me that the place was Earls Court, when Earls Court was at least 10 minutes back by bus and it would take me at least 40 minutes to walk back. It was overall, a very bad experience with this Company, who has an unexperienced driver and lack of care for their customers running old and not fully functional buses. How can you leave the bus station with a bus which doesn't have the minimum necessary to offer a comfortable trip to your customers? It is unacceptable to have in service a bus which will run for at least 2:45 minutes where passengers can't even use the loo. When we boarded and found that the toilet was not working, my friend asked the driver where the toilet was and he told him that he would have to go to a restaurant as the station doesn't have toilets. My friend is an old person with mobility problems and he had to try to run to the restaurant and back before the bus left. He got back just in time, but had to push himself to be able to take that bus. The request to stop in Earls Court was also due to his mobility and the driver trying to drop us more than 1 mile away wouldn't help at all. I would like an apology and compensation from this Company, as I didn't receive what I paid for.
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Posted 1 year ago
The worst and rudest experience I have encountered on any travels, we were there before the departing time to go to gate 19 for our bus at 7:30 to Middlesbrough. We waited there and went to ask a number of staff at the coach station who told us to go to stand 17 and to board. One of the staff members then proceed to slam the door in our face, shouted and made gestures. He then proceeded to come back 2 minutes later to shout at us, condescending and utterly rude. I have never experienced this type of customer interaction before and as a result would refrain from ever using this service again. Such was the level of shouting by the staff member, a customer on a different coach stepped in to say he was out of line in the manner he was speaking to us. To put the cherry on the top all we told they can do for us was for us to purchase a new tickets as there’s nothing they can do. Everything was out of their hands.
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Posted 1 year ago
National Express is rated 1.6 based on 325 reviews