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A few Q regarding ALSA bus tickets

I want to buy ALSA tickets for us to go from Cordoba to Granada in April.

1) A post from a year ago said ALSA tickets aren't for sale until weeks before the journey. But they seem to be for sale two+ months out.
2) One post from a year or two ago said tickets don't sell out, so just buy them when we're there. Is this still accurate? Is there a discount for purchasing in advance? One post said "50%"
3) There are buses that leave at about 9, 11:30, 1:30
If we have to pick a time, we'd do 11:30, for a relaxing AM and walking around.
BUT, if we want to stay until 1:30 is it easy to change a pre-purchased ticket to later in the day?
4) The total ticket price for all of us is stated as "39.92 Euro "no changes or cancellations permitted" or 59.24 E
Their site doesn't say what the 59 Euro price "buys you" -> is it "free changes to other time and/or day? or, like in #2 above, is it the "same day purchase price" and the 39E is the advance price?

Thanks

Posted by
5188 posts

Evan,

  1. You're correct, tickets can be purchased a few months in advance (this may not be the case for other
    bus companies)

  2. Tickets may sell out, especially for popular times, so it's best to buy your tickets at least a few days in
    advance.
    Yes, one can choose to buy discounted tickets, however one cannot change or cancel them.

  3. I chose April 10, 2018, departing Córdoba at 11am, for this example: The ALSA website, shows you three different priced tickets; 7.25€ (no changes or cancellations), 10.25€ ( "can change but cannot cancel") and 14.81€ ( can change and/ or cancel but there may be fees involved if changes occur less than 48 hours prior to departure time. You can read all the rules and conditions on the ALSA website, under FAQ by clicking on the bar which reads; "Do you need any help?" ( top right of webpage).

  4. Read #3... different priced tickets allow you to change or not.

I hope this helps.

BTW, I hope you've already booked your Alhambra tickets . The last time I checked for the month of April, the first 9 days and last 3 days are already sold out. Book yout tickets ASAP.

For future reference only... Alhambra tickets can be booked 3 months in advance.

Have a wonderful trip!

Edited to add... FYI, there are still some Alhambra tickets available for April, except for April 1 - 9, 21 and 28 - 30.

Posted by
391 posts

Yesterday I was seeking 4 adult tickets and only had two prices show up and they only had the wording which I put above.

Today, thanks to your reply, I looked for 1 ticket and I see your words also.
I'll now try for 4 tickets.
I edited by search to 4 adults and now it came up w/ only one price - 59E
If they are monitoring me, based on cookies or IP address, I'll go elsewhere and search. STUPID.

The daughter-in-law that's traveling w/ us didn't have her passport yet, so I was going slow on purchasing some things.
Alhambra sold out for nearly all of April before then end of January (1/26).
In response, I contacted the hotel and they got our tickets for us.

Posted by
26840 posts

There are only so many cheap tickets for each departure; as others buy them, they are not available to you. I'm guessing there may be fewer than 4 tickets available in the lower price categories, so your request for 4 tickets is being bumped up to the more expensive category. Someone mentioned on the forum the other day that a similar process can occur with train tickets, but I don't remember in what country or through what selling agent.

Posted by
391 posts

Yesterday, I clicked to purchase 4 tickets at ALSA, did the VISA payment method and their "processing" and spinning wheel timer kept spinning, etc. for over 10 minutes.
I went back and started over.
Even tried to create an account (I DID, but I'll qualify that later)
Then tried to finalize the payment/purchase and the 'processing' went of maybe 30 minutes before i killed it.

I went back to my account and under 'country of residence' the USA isn't a valid option - perhaps only EU or EU and Africa countries were listed.
Any thoughts?

Posted by
26840 posts

How about "Estados Unidos"?

If you give us a link to the registration page, we can take a look. I tried to find it on ALSA.com but had no luck.

Numerous folks have had problems by train tickets from the Renfe website with US credit cards. Using PayPal has been reported to work. If that's an option on alsa.com, try that.

Posted by
650 posts

I bought ALSA tickets in May for Granada to Cordaba with a Capital One MasterCard with no difficulties other than calling Capital about the transaction.

The cost difference is a premium for the ability to change the tickets. We went cheap with no ability to exchange.