Hi
I happened to book tickets with VRL for my to & fro ticket from Bombay - Mangalore.
The trip with VRL was nothing short of a disaster...How can a company of VRL stature be so cheap when it comes to customer service ???
I'll explain you in detail what happened & why I am so frustrated with the service of VRL.

Firstly, I booked a seat from Bombay to Mangalore on the 1st of may from Sion, Bombay scheduled at 7.30 p.m. There was no TV, no music, the driver was on the phone most of the times, even while driving. Than we took a stop for dinner, can you guess where??? at a breakfast point, where nothing that can be called a dinner was served. Than our driver had to take a break to wash his face & legs at regular intervals...Our morning breakfast was again at a cheap restaurant called some 'Kamath Yatri Niwas' which was such a low class place to have food. By then we were already late by an hour n half but it seemed the driver was on a leisure trip, driving with a phone in one hand & steering in other. It took few of the passengers to yell at him to stop him from talking over the phone & focus on driving. After all of this we could reach Mangalore only at 2.45 P.M.
I thought this was maybe just a one off case.

Now a bigger disaster happened just yesterday, as I had a scheduled ticket on the 8th of May from Mangalore to Bombay on a multi-axle AC Volvo..
Tour date: 08/05/2011
Tour contact Receipt No: 5262417
Control No: 4617673
Boarding Point: Urva
Seat No: 1

Everything seemed normal till our dinner stop, which made me believe that VRL is a Low class bus service that possibly gets some commission from the restaurants they stop by.
This was a stinky place called 'New Mallika Palace' at Kumta, Karnataka
The worst hotel that one would wanna stop by, that too when there are other hotels few kilometers away, that seemed better than the one we stopped at.
This restaurant that we stopped at complimented the service provided by VRL.
the washrooms were all stinky & messy, no lights, . The restaurant had a place called family room/section, but the fact was it was nothing short of a country bar with weird drunk people ogling at females as if they got to see a different Species altogether. Food was the worst I ever had. After paying 40/- all I could manage to have in dinner was a spoonful of smelly food they called fried rice...I bet you cannot have any more of that crap. Ironically, this restaurant claimed to be approved by Karnataka Tourism & other state government agencies.
I didn't even wanted to speak to the manager about the quality of food. because it was a cheap place managed by few unprofessionals akin to VRL.
After having nothing to eat for dinner because of the substandard food served, almost all of the passengers were frustrated so we thought of speaking to the driver & ask him why he stopped at such a bad restaurant.
To our utter surprise & dismay, the driver was extremely rude, & unapologetic. Instead of listening to the customers complaints he kept on yelling at us. it took his co-driver to come and calm him down. He was blaming the company itself for stopping the vehicle at such a substandard restaurant. As per him, it was the manager who decided that the bus should stop at this restaurant, Now I am assuming there should be some reason for that manager to ask the driver to stop at such a restaurant maybe some commission from that restaurant.
Soon the driver called up some of his bosses, to explain the situation but, the manager too defended his decision.

After experiencing the low grade service at VRL, I doubt if you guys at VRL would even take any action & ensure this doesn't happen again.
But, please keep in mind that the people who travel by upper class bus service like a Volvo do expect some service & that is exactly the reason why they pay a premium. Do understand that the customers do have a standard unlike VRL that seems to me like a very ill managed company.
I'll ensure that I never travel by VRL, ever again & also ask each & every one I know to not go through the 1 day Trauma with VRL that I had been through & just to help others know the pathetic bus service that VRL is I have sent this mail to many newspapers in Karnataka & also I am gonna post online reviews about the sub standard service offered by VRL.

Thanking you,
Your ex customer