Well, thanks to a heavy dose of frustration with Greyhound, I have bowed to sanity and decided to fly to Phoenix instead of taking the bus. My pilgrimage to Oklahoma — the only one of the Lower 48 states that I haven’t yet set foot in — will have to wait. I’ll be flying on Frontier Airlines from LaGuardia to Sky Harbor on Nov. 11.

What happened to the Greyhound plan? Well, negative comments by Andrew and Dane notwithstanding, I was still planning to take the bus, leaving very early Sunday morning. Yesterday was the last day I could have bought my ticket with the 7-day “advance purchase” price — after that, the cost would increase by $60 — but I knew that deadline was coming, and I fully planned to buy my ticket before midnight Central Time, or 1:00 AM Eastern Time, last night (because, according to the website, “Advance purchase and discount deadlines are based on Central Time”). No problem.

But when I logged onto greyhound.com at around 11:30 PM to buy my ticket (the last-minute-ness of the purchase was due to an debate over whether I would be leaving from Hartford or New York, finally resolved yesterday evening in favor of Hartford), I got an error message stating that “online purchase is not available for this schedule.” I called Greyhound on the phone, and the telephone agent explained that this is because the Hartford station doesn’t have “will call” ticket services, so the ticket would have to be mailed to me, and that requires a 10-day advance purchase. So my only option would be to go in person to the Hartford station and buy my ticket there — but since the ticket booth closes at 10:00 PM, I wouldn’t be able to go there until the next morning, by which time the advance-purchase fare for my planned departure date would no longer be available. The agent cheerfully suggested that I could just delay my trip by a day.

My other option would have been to leave from New York, where there are will-call ticket services and thus online ticketing is possible, instead of Hartford. But, oh wait, that wasn’t an option, because according to Mr. Genius Telephone Agent, the advance-purchase deadline had already passed because, by now, it was 12:02 AM Eastern time, and that means it was now Monday, not Sunday. I read him (a couple of times) the statement on the website upon which I had based my plans — “Advance purchase and discount deadlines are based on Central Time” — but he insisted that, in fact, the deadline is based on the time zone in your departing city. I tried to elicit from him some sort of explanation of what the website’s text might possibly mean, if it doesn’t mean what I thought it meant, but he could offer none (he’s just a peon, after all). He just told me that it was too late to buy my ticket, and — again — I’d have to delay my trip by a day, or pay the higher fare.

Well, technically I could have delayed my trip by a day, but… hell no! I’m not going to inconvenience myself because of Greyhound’s poor infrastructure and false advertising. When it comes to consumer protection, I firmly believe that the best weapon is your wallet, so, screw Greyhound — I took my business elsewhere. Hello, Frontier Airlines. The price difference is only $20 or so anyway, and maybe the fine folks at Frontier will actually be competent! :)