INTERVIEW
With the maintenance workers' strike continuing, one TGV out of three will be in circulation Tuesday on the Atlantic axis. And with this strike, as since the bad weather in the South of France which paralyze a part of the SNCF traffic, the users are numerous to bitch against the explosion of the prices of the alternative solution: the famous ones because Macron, FlixBus and others BlaBlaBus.
Prices doubled or even tripled compared to normal. Ilona is a student in Paris and wanted to return home to La Rochelle for the holidays, her train being removed: "I go on my phone to take a BlablaBus, it was 58.99 euros.It is already very expensive, normal time is between 17 and 20 euros ".
"The ticket takes 10 euros in 3 minutes for no reason"
But the student was not at the end of his surprises: "My boyfriend starts to book his bus, and there, the price climbs to 69.99 euros, in three minutes! It made us angry because we said that they really took advantage of the distress of the people, the SNCF strike to increase prices.But especially, see that in 3 minutes, the ticket takes 10 euros for no reason, it's disgusting ".
The companies assure that there are no voluntary increases. "We do not have the hand on the algorithm.As in the rail or the air, the prices of our tickets are fixed according to the filling of the bus", assures on Europe 1 the director of the operations of FlixBus. "Tickets taken in advance when the bus is empty are cheap, those taken at the last minute when it is almost full are expensive."
"We do not increase our prices manually"
"We do not increase our prices manually during a strike, just people are throwing themselves at the last remaining bills, so expensive tickets, it's the law of the market," he says. But, if the company does not increase prices manually, can it not at least limit the increase? "It would not be profitable for us, we need to be able to sell some tickets at the most expensive price to compensate for the rest of the tickets which sometimes start at 5 euros." Yes, we take advantage of the strike by selling the tickets that we rest of the time, the travelers profit from very, very low prices ".
Another solution: increase the bus fleet to limit the price of tickets. Here again, FlixBus's management of operations has its answer: "We are not the owners of our buses, we are renting the service to companies located throughout France and asking them to put more buses in circulation, but at the moment these are the school holidays, so their buses are already used a lot elsewhere. "