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The Stagecoach Bus App

Through a forum enquiry this week it has emerged that the Stagecoach Bus App and live web tracker, both of which work perfectly OK in the UK, are currently struggling to work well overseas.

I have spent a lot of time and energy on this question, but somehow it seems to be related to the week difference between the UK and the USA ending summer time.

Please note that if you do a plan your journey enquiry on either the app or the website you can always download a PDF timetable for your route off the planner. The PDF timetable will always, in my experience, be correct. If there is a discrepancy between the 'printed timetable' and the app, then it is far more likely to be the former which is correct.

Even more importantly it really would be appreciated if a local tells you that the printed timetable is right (as they use the buses and know it is right), please actually believe them, not place blind reliance and faith in apps.

We have encountered similar issues with a number of other European websites, and the answer tends to be the same, that the sites or apps have been coded/written for domestic use, not overseas use.

Posted by
16408 posts

An easy way around this is to use a VPN that offers country specific IP addresses.

Many are free. For phones or tablets, all you have to do is download an app and hit the connect button. You still connect to your home/hotel/coffehouse wifi but everything you send gets rerouted and encrypted through the VPN.

This also helps to keep you safe when using public wifi as it also hides your original IP address.

Posted by
897 posts

please actually believe them, not place blind reliance and faith in apps.

+1

If I may add the website or app quirks may not necessarily be an issue of the device's physical location, but rather the time zone it's set to.

I've seen this when attempting to purchase various tickets from home. It wasn't enough to account for the 5 hour time difference and attempt the purchase at my corresponding local time. Switch the computer to GMT and I could make my purchase.

Took my tablet to the UK this last trip to keep track of some things at home and it stayed on Eastern Time cause I was too lazy to change. In the UK on UK servers and looking at UK sites and knew I'd get various quirks and hiccups. Go through Stagecoach or even Google Maps and I'd get information, availability or live current service status for a service that had already operated 3 or 4 hours earlier and Southern would show ticket availability for trains that terminated hours earlier. Didn't matter that it was 7am in Chichester information provided as though it was 2am.

On the other hand CityMapper provides information based on local time of the city I'm looking at not my local time