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Earlier this summer, I waited in 90 degree heat for a Peter Pan bus from Providence, RI to New York, NY. Not only was the bus late, five passengers including myself were left behind because there weren’t any seats left on the bus — even though we had bought our tickets hours, if not days, in advance! The relief bus we were promised never showed, we were never guaranteed seats on the next scheduled bus, and nobody from Peter Pan ever contacted any of us to apologize, offer our money back or guarantee us a ride to New York.

I started this petition because it’s not just bad customer service to oversell buses — the practice exploits people who don’t have the resources to walk away and book another ride with a different bus company. Please sign my petition calling on Peter Pan to immediately stop overselling its buses and guarantee passengers a seat on the buses they’ve paid for. I know that if enough people in the northeast US make enough noise, Peter Pan will want to make the changes necessary to avoid damaging their brand.

Throughout my experience with Peter Pan, I was shocked at how the bus company disregarded the needs of passengers it had left stranded. The driver of the full bus told us that Dispatch was sending a relief bus, and that it would be there within 30 minutes. But the relief bus was canceled and nobody ever contacted us to let us know — even though there’s a Peter Pan representative inside Providence’s Kennedy Plaza bus station and I had been tweeting at Peter Pan since the moment we weren’t able to get on the original bus.

While I was fighting for a refund of my fare in the following weeks, Peter Pan’s customer service later told me that seating is “first come first serve” — but nowhere on any of the documentation I received from them (an email receipt or my actual ticket) is this stated.

Corporate practices like these harm and exploit the most vulnerable — people who don’t have the money or a smartphone to just walk away and choose another bus line. I want Peter Pan to stop this practice of overselling buses now, and guarantee their customers a seat on the buses they’ve paid for.