I bought some “Greyhound Express” Bus tickets but when I printed them out, it says
Umm so greyhound is selling unlimited tickets and everyone just shows up? Is this for express only or does regular Greyhound also just have a ‘we made you buy the tickets, now fight to see who gets on’. How early do you have to get there (to the DC station)?
their customer service number was disconnected . . .
Now that’s a bad sign.
Probably not much different than airlines overbooking flights to account for people cancelling or no-showing at the last minute. Likely is rarely an issue.
Or, they have had problems with busses leaving on time due to people showing up at the last minute so this is a way to get people there on time.
Back in my college days I took the Greyhound quite often. Yes they do oversell tickets and on occassion I had to wait for a second bus. I was never in a hurry and the second bus was generally less full so I never minded. Once they even sent me to the next stop (in a different town) in a taxi. I wont say the taxi thing was common, but it was much more comfortable than the bus.
Now that I think of it, when I bought my tickets I never had to specify when I was leaving. A ticket from A to B was just that and can be used for any departure. So if that is still the case, there would be no way of knowing when the bus would be full.
Now this was almost ten years ago so YMMV.
Greyhound is not selling you a ticket on a specific bus, they are selling you travel from point A to point B. As far as I know they don’t have any routes where you are guaranteed a seat on a specific departure. On peak dates (e.g. the week of Thanksgiving) they will call up another bus to take the overflow, and might sort passengers onto one or the other bus based on departure. On non-peak dates if you can’t fit on a bus, you wait for the next one.