FlixBus no-show : Legal Scam and Total Impunity

On May 7th, my friends and I were at Berlin Central Bus Station waiting for our 8:55 PM FlixBus to Paris. We received an SMS warning us of a one-hour delay, so we waited. At 9:10 PM, my friend checked the tracking app and saw the bus was already heading to Paris. It had never stopped at our station. We had to book last-minute tickets for €90 to get home in time for work.

After digging into this, I found out that the bus was never at Berlin Central Bus Station at the scheduled time. Not delayed, simply never there. Which means FlixBus sent us an SMS about a "delay" for a bus that was already gone, or never coming. Whether that's a system failure or deliberate misdirection, the result is the same: passengers were kept waiting on a platform for a bus that was never going to show up.

The worst part ? There is no way to prove it.

FlixBus owns all the evidence. GPS tracking logs, real-time vehicle position data, route history, none of it is publicly accessible. They can tell you whatever they want about where their bus was, and you have absolutely no independent way to verify or challenge it. After multiple emails back and forth, they refused to refund us. They control the narrative entirely.

I spent a good chunk of my day going through every legal option I could find, and also digging through open geolocation data files hoping to find something useful. Here's where I landed:

• GDPR access request: you can ask for your personal data, but the vehicle's GPS logs aren't your personal data, they belong to FlixBus. They can legally refuse to share them.
• Court-ordered disclosure: technically possible if you sue, but legal costs would far exceed any bus ticket reimbursement.
• Open geolocation data: FlixBus is only required to publish static timetables in the EU. Real-time or historical vehicle positions? Entirely proprietary. There is simply nothing to find.

Here's the thing though. If this happened to me with SNCF, France's national rail operator, I'd be covered. Train and bus delays and positions are publicly available open data, independently verifiable by anyone. So why isn't the same standard applied to FlixBus, a near-monopoly on long-distance coach travel across Europe?

They can leave you stranded, own all the proof, and face zero consequences. And that's perfectly legal.