Do you want to contact First about bus services in Cornwall? Good luck with that!
12 January 2024

Suppose that you, as a bus passenger in Cornwall, want to contact the relevant bus company with a query or complaint about a service. Go Cornwall Bus publish a contact email address (ask@gocornwallbus.co.uk) and I have generally found that they respond reasonably quickly and usually provide a sensible answer.

However, when it comes to First Bus, things are not so straightforward. In November 2023, I asked the local transport team in Cornwall Council if they had a contact address for First Bus Cornwall and they gave me an address of FirstSouth.Enquiries@firstbus.co.uk. However, when I sent a test email to that address, I received a reply telling me that this was a “commercial” contact address and not to use it for customer queries (see copy of email below).

On the Cornwall by Kernow (First Cornwall) Twitter feed, it gives an address of emailus@cornwallbykernow.co.uk (see screenshot below). Today, I tried emailing to that address and received an auto reply telling me that "this e-mail address is no longer in use” (so why is it on their Twitter feed?).

First want customers to contact them via their website at www.firstbus.co.uk/help-support/contact-us and then you have to try to force fit your query into one of their categories, by which time you will probably have lost the will to live!

Alternatively, you can try ringing their call centre on 0345 646 0707 (Monday-Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) However, the call centre is in Leeds and the call centre staff’s knowledge of what is going on with Cornwall’s buses is limited to say the least! Today, I rang them to ask if a particular service was running (no. 27 Truro to St Austell at 12:40 - the bustimes.org tracking website suggested that it was not running). After 10 minutes, the operator confessed that she was unable to confirm whether or not it was running, but on balance it probably wasn’t. For some reason, she was unable to phone someone in the First operations room in Cornwall and ask if the bus had actually departed from Truro at that time. Meanwhile the First Bus app on my phone was giving me supposedly “live” information that it was running - it wasn’t.

It is a shame that, with all the taxpayer money from both Cornwall Council and central government going into subsidising bus fares, a national company such as First do not put a relatively small amount of money and effort into providing a reasonably competent passenger information service.