Safiyyah

Jul 11, 2025

How I found my lost suitcase left with the worst coach company in the world

I will never take Flixbus ever again for many reasons. Firstly, less than 30 minutes before my coach was due on 11th June, they delayed it by 2 hours. I was already on the way so I had to arrive at the bus station and wait. 2 hours went by, and the delayed coach hadn’t arrived. On the tracker, it was nowhere near us. It turned out the coach had come from Newcastle, and had gone straight past us in Middlesborough and didn’t even stop to get us! This was the biggest waste of 3 hours. I then had to return home and I got the next coach out compensated by FlixBus at 08:35am. I thought this would be the end of my awful experience with Flixbus. But the worst was yet to come. Due to my extreme fatigue and stress on the 08.35am coach, when I got off at Leeds, I had realised I left my suitcase in the luggage compartment and by the time I realised, it had already set off for the next stop in Manchester. My mum came to pick me up so we decided to try and race the bus to the next station and get my luggage. However, we arrived 10 minutes later and the coach had already set off. When I called Flixbus’ customer service, they were extremely rude and unhelpful, refusing to tell us the bus depot that the coach was going to as I had the hopes of getting my luggage from there. When I asked to speak to the manager to complain, they refused to put me on the phone with them! They also refused to give us any information at all that would help. Of course, it was completely my fault for leaving the suitcase but they have a duty to protect their customers and they left us completely alone to deal with this and the fact that 14 days then went by and they still failed to locate my suitcase which was on THEIR coach and I had given a detailed description of, was completely unacceptable. By day 16, I had called everyone I knew that could help with no luck. Then, on Sunday 29th June I had an idea that maybe the luggage was still on the coach and apparently the same exact coaches took the same routes. So at 8:35am, I turned up at the station with one last hope of finding my suitcase. The FlixBus worker was extremely rude and unhelpful when I tried to explain that just for my peace of mind, I wanted to look inside the compartment to see if my suitcase was there. He unexpectedly ended up being the one who was the most helpful as when (unsurprisingly) the suitcase wasn’t there, he pointed to an address, written in tiny letters at the bottom of the coach. He said that this was the address of the depot and I should look them up. So I did, and I found their website. Stanley Bus Depot. I filled in their lost luggage form and forgot about it the next day, expecting it to be another dead end. Imagine my shock when the very next day, I got an email saying that my luggage has been found and to pick it up from their location in Durham!! This was only an hour’s drive from me so I went and my suitcase was there in the office! I couldn’t believe how the name of the depot was literally written on their coach and FlixBus had the nerve to say they ‘have no information about the depot or anywhere else the bus goes to after it’s route’. LIES. So that’s how I found my luggage, which was sat there the whole time, all by myself without the help of FlixBus. I hope this can help anyone who ever finds themselves to be in a similar position. And also, never travel with FlixBus!