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The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/Viperviolinist on 2025-03-24 19:55:44+00:00.
Just got back this past weekend from my 16 day trip in Japan and wanted to share my experience with Willer Express - spoiler alert, it was horrible.
I had booked two tickets for me and my boyfriend to Tokyo from Kyoto. The day of, it was raining and very gloomy and we didn’t have anything specifically planned, so we actually stayed in the area, coincidentally at a net café right behind where the pick up was set to be.
As it was a night bus, the departure time was at 11:40 PM. At around 10:50 PM we grabbed our bags from the Kyoto station, coin lockers, and made our way to the designated pick up spot, which was G2. We arrived at that spot at 11:20 PM (had our bags in a farther coin locker and had to go under the station). There was a woman in a pink Willer Express jacket stationed there making “announcements”; she was talking pretty fast and trying to talk over the rain, but there was no microphone or auxiliary system, so it was hard to hear anything super clearly. However, I had my reservation email up and ready as advised by it.
Shortly after 11:30 PM, a pink Willer bus blasts past G2 and goes right to G1, even though there was no bus at G2. The staff lady runs over to it and we follow along with some other people. We thought it was weird because I had not gotten any kind of notification that our bus pick up location had changed, but we wanted to double-check just in case.
She was yelling something that we couldn’t hear over the noise of the road, rain, and people running, and was in fast Japanese anyway, so I didn’t catch most of it. I had received an email for my booking and it had a section in Japanese that we were supposed to show to either the bus driver or a staff member upon boarding. Other people were showing her this as well so I went up and showed her it and very impatiently she said “no, next bus, second stop, not your bus” and directed us back to the stop we had been waiting at.
My boyfriend and I thought this was very weird, but we followed her direction as she was wearing the uniform of a staff member for Willer Express. The bus at G1 stayed there until the time that ours was supposed to depart; multiple times we looked at each other and said “maybe that is our bus”, but we heard her come and say names of people that were missing and she did not call my name which the booking was under. During this time, other buses came to G2, but all of them refused us saying they weren’t our bus either. Every single staff person or bus driver was extremely rude to us.
At about 11:45 PM, five minutes after the bus that we thought might be ours left, we saw the woman that had turned us away, walking towards our direction, past G2. We went up to her, and she seemed to get visibly nervous, but pretended that she didn’t know us, and told us our bus had already left and then pulled out her phone to translate that she “wasn’t supposed to be there” and a whole bunch of other excuses.
My boyfriend told me to just let her go and try to contact support, but due to the time, support wasn’t available and literally nothing could be done. We were completely abandoned in Kyoto with no accommodations or any alternative way to get to our destination that we were supposed to be in the next day. We ended up having to pay for a hotel that night and then also shinkansen tickets the following day, which we had been hoping to save the cost of on our trip since we had already been on the shinkansen twice (couldn’t do the rail pass due to itinerary). In total, beyond the $80 that these tickets were, we were out an extra $252.
I contacted Willer Express support via email since it was the only way I could reach out. We got the most uncaring response along with them blaming us, saying that there was an announcement that the bus had changed to G1 and since other people had gone on the bus, they didn’t give a shit basically. (The “announcement” being Japanese yelled while she was running in the rain). They claimed every single inquiry about the bus was answered; yet if that was true, we would have been on that bus. They also say that they can’t verify our claims that the woman denied us because of course she freaking wouldn’t admit to it!
They also refused to give anything more than a 50% refund; i’m taking this to my bank and also letting everyone know how they treat foreigners and people who literally follow their own instructions.
Night buses are already not a great way to travel; I’ve used this service before back when I was studying abroad in a small town in Japan, and it wasn’t great before, but it was better than having to spend an exorbitant amount of money. If you think you’re gonna save any money or time, I would say skip it, especially Willer Express (though the other buses were assholes too). It’s also better to be well rested for vacation anyway.