Here Comes The Bus Negative Reviews

Here Comes the Bus App Complaints & User Negative Comments 2024

Here Comes the Bus app received 28 complaints, negative comments and reviews by users. Have you ever had a bad experience using Here Comes the Bus? Can you share your negative thoughts about here comes the bus?

Here Comes the Bus for Negative User Reviews

✓ I’m frustratedI’ve been using this app for over two years. For the past years it’s been working good. But now I’m just done. At the beginning of the year it worked like it should. But then no bus icon showed up. So I went outside at 7:30am. The bus didn’t show up till 8:40. An hour late. And it was a substitute which I was unaware of. It has just been a rotation of my original bus and the substitute bus. Then one day the bus app actually showed a bus. I watched the bus app and it never picked me up. So my mom called transportation. They said they split the route and they accidentally assigned my area the wrong one and they weren’t able to change it. Great. So I was an hour late to school that day. Yesterday I had to wait for an hour outside again in 26 degrees. I’m just frustrated. I never know what bus it is going to be and neither do the bus drivers. Let’s not forget that sometimes my bus stop icon and radius don’t show up. Before this app was made I at least knew when my bus would show up. But now I never know..Blue708Version: 3.5.0

✓ If only Synovia would communicate with customersOur school district promoted this app and we signed up for it. Last year it worked as promised, and we appreciated having it. This year about a week into the new school year, the district changed our child’s bus route home. I have tried to contact the company every way that I know how, through their contact link, through the email address they provide on the parent introduction page, and using another email address the district provided, trying to get them to update the afternoon alerts. No one has replied, no one has fixed the problem. I’m continuing to get inaccurate alert information. If I don’t hear back from them in another week or so, I will delete the app. Is anyone from Synovia Solutions reading these reviews?.Lola503Version: 3.5.8

✓ App is great - when it worksThis app was working well - I would get real time alerts and could see where the bus was so my son could get out to the bus stop on time. There have been times over the last year and a half that our district has used the app that it would freeze up and the bus location would be stuck in one place for an extended period of time, but that usually fixed itself. Sometimes I had to delete the app and reinstall and sign in. Recently the app is basically garbage for me. I no longer receive notifications when the bus is in the 2 mile radius. I open the app and the bus location is at the transportation center for an hour, or it’s at another location stuck. Last week I contacted help/support and someone responded a day later. I replied and sent a screenshot of my map and what problems I was experiencing but I haven’t heard back - not even “we’re working on it.” I just deleted my account and the app..AishaziaVersion: 3.5.1

✓ Not always reliablePros: The concept is great! UI is simple and easy. Nice getting notifications of when bus is in the area. It provides me a general idea of where the bus is located. Fortunately our driver is typically on schedule so we’ve learned to use this as a tool to help us. Cons: Using an iPhone 13 OS 15, I can no longer use the icons at the top of the Map view or the Menu icon. The actual arrival times do not display. The stop icons no longer change/update color when the bus has arrived. The push notifications seem to work best in the morning vs afternoon I’m not notified until bus is at the stop. I’ve found if I’m having major issues with things not working (beginning of school year, using a new device, etc) best to uninstall and reinstall the app. However this does not resolve all issues..Misy joensVersion: 3.5.0

✓ App is not working.This is my first school year using this app. At the beginning, it seemed to work fine. Then slowly things started breaking down. First there were no sounds with the notifications. This caused us to miss the bus several times. Then the pop-up notifications for this app on my cell phone stopped working. Now the icons showing the bus stop and school aren’t changing from red to green to let me know the kids have arrived. I can still see the movements of the bus if I keep the app open. I am using an iPhone 8. I have reset the app as well as my phone. Nothing seems to work. I have checked the notifications settings in the app as well as in my phone. All are set correctly. I have 3 children who ride 3 different busses to 3 different schools so the problem can’t be the drivers since it worked fine for the first few days of school. I have attempted to contact the developer and the website has no clickable links to allow me to fill out their “form” for support. I was excited when I had heard about this app. It is a terrific idea, however the actual app is not as user friendly as it could be and is extremely unreliable..Bamboobear21Version: 2.6.3

✓ Does not workLast year this app worked most of the time. This school year however most days it does not work! Almost every morning when I open the app I get the message bus information not available. Then on some mornings about 20 or 30 min after the bus has arrived I’ll get a message that has updated bus info on it, but the bus icon still does not appear on map. This app is most important to me for use in the AM so I know when to send my kids to the bus stop on cold rainy days. But when the app is not working they either end up waiting in bad weather for unnecessary amounts of time, or I have to get my baby dressed and put all my kids in the car so I can drive my bus riders to the stop and wait with them so there not being snowed on or drenched with cold rain. This app is suppose to make bus riding easier, but even after weekly, sometimes daily reports to customer service there has been no improvement to this apps ability to accurately display bus location for the AM route. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix this problem!!!!!!.Big fish killerVersion: 2.7.4

✓ Another day another false alertUpdate. The app support link links to Synovia but the support page is not found. No support for you ! Update. Object reference not set to an instance of an object. I guess just another day we are not able to track the bus. Update. I guess it is on the school but one child gets tracking and the other mostly does not. And today at 8:50 I received the alert that the bus entered the area at 7:02 Another day another false alert. School not even over and the kid’ll be home momentarily. Really ? Another day another false alert. School has not even ended and I am getting an alert my student will be home momentarily. And yes I have set the alert notification radius to almost zero. And now it has alerted, well I am not going to get another one until the next route tomorrow. Who knows if there is a problem with the bus. Back to the old days and just hope and pray my child gets home. The twisty route our bus takes has the bus entering the geofencing well before it is actually anywhere near us, like today in the afternoon when it was on the way back to the school after some run, before school was even let out. And if you set it for the last minute the bus is 30 seconds out and a 4 minute walk from the house. Nice idea. Could use some refinement..Andrewoz1415Version: 3.5.1

✓ Login troubles and inaccurate bus locationsHad this for a month and half, it’s very helpful since I have an autistic son and many kids to look after. App lets you know if it’s within the radius you set up and when a student has scan their bus card. It’s inaccurate when the bus is still picking up other kids or outside the house, I saw on the map that it was still in other neighborhoods but really the bus was in front of my house waiting and eventually left. Then few weeks ago it started glitching, making it unable to see where the bus is. I’m sure they fix that by now but I wouldn’t know because I’m unable to login into my account. Been sending request password change but received nothing through the email I set up with. Please fix this, there’s a total of 6 kids I look after and need to get ready every morning..Aliven692Version: 3.5.9

✓ Has not worked for me since Jan. 2023Update on previous review. This app suddenly stopped working in Jan. 2023. It says Bus n/a not in service. I have called multiple times and put in service requests. One time I talked to someone and they said they can see the bus and let me know where it is. It was never fixed. Fast forward I called and left a message on Sept. 16th. They never returned my call. I called today and got someone. They said my daughter is not assigned a bus which is not true. They told me to call my district’s transportation department. I have previously talked to transportation and they show that the bus is in synovia ( which is here comes the bus server, I think or where the district pays the billing). Transportation does not understand why here comes the bus can’t see it. I am so tired of dealing with this. My daughter is a special needs student and I feel that they do not care about my concerns. Especially since I have been dealing with this for 10 months now. There also has never been an explanation as why it just stopped working. I have also signed out and deleted the app and then reinstalled to see if it would help and it didn’t. From what I understand it is only not working for some of the schools in the district, so they can’t say it the school district not entering in the route for the student. If I don’t get a response and resolution soon I will be looking into where I can go next to get this taken care of and working again..VffvnVersion: 3.5.7

✓ Student map data lost!The app worked great, until there is an error for some North Carolina schools where “no stops are found.” Support is non existent with support tickets being made with no response. Would really like to know if there is some area for live support?.Suru1974Version: 2.3.1

✓ Hasn’t worked since the first week of schoolI have heard about this app and I was looking forward to using it at the start of this school year. The first week it showed me where the bus was on a map and when it arrived at my child’s school and when it departed. School started August 1st and it’s now the middle of September and the only thing I get from the app is when my child’s school bus is in the stop radius. It doesn’t show me where exactly my child’s school bus is at on a map or even the correct bus number anymore. This is disappointing seeing as how the app prides itself on monitoring where the bus is at all times. I have emailed twice now every time I have a problem with the app and I have only gotten 1 response. I only keep the app so I know when the bus is in the stop radius (which is 2 miles). I how these issues get fixed soon!.Mes CasperVersion: 2.7.0

✓ Not very helpfulThe app let’s me know when the bus arrives in the morning for one child but not my other child. Because the driver does not come at the same time every day it’s easy to miss the bus unless they’re at the stop very early. I’ve tried changing the radius to be alerted earlier- I can’t change it for one child because his bus stop isn’t listed on his account and neither the website or app allows me to change this. I can change the radius for my other child but I still am never alerted for his bus in the morning. For the afternoons I have the same issue except vice versa: the kid that does not receive an alert in the morning gets an alert in the afternoon. The kid who does get an alert in the morning does not get one in the afternoon. Again, neither the website or the app allows me list a bus stop for one of my children or change the radius notifications. And the child who does have a bus stop listed does not receive the alert at adequate times even though I have changed the bus radius..Always-a-fanVersion: 3.4.0

✓ Terribly implementedThis app is great conceptually but it’s buggy and confusing. It’s clear they never tested the login page with a third party password manager like LastPass- the credentials are pasted into the wrong fields, and the keyboard gets screwed up and you can’t fix the school district ID. The user experience is also bad- the map opens on a location in my general area but not where either we are or where my kids go to school. Labels on the map are technically correct but in very strange locations. The app fails in strange ways when the server load is high- this is the first day of school and it’s a new app for our district and some actions show results 20-30 seconds after you perform them, which makes figuring out a confusing app even harder. I’m shocked that an app with this many flaws has so many great reviews..RebdataVersion: 2.6.3

✓ Great idea, but...I was very excited when I learned that an app like this existed! My kids pickup/drop off is about a 3 minute walk from our house. I was really hoping this app would give me a 5 minute heads up so I could send the kids out the door at an appropriate time so they didn't have to stand in the freezing cold for so long. Unfortunately the max distance you can set the notifications for is 1 mile. By the time my phone dings with the notification, the bus is there within less than a minute. I want to know when the bus is almost here when my kids get off the bus as well. Again, the notifications don't give a good enough heads up. I wish the radius could be set at 2 miles. Also, often times I will get the notification on my phone once the bus has already dropped them off. I would love of this app allowed for a greater radius and was more accurate with notifications..MbblsbVersion: 3.5.1

✓ Good luck finding customer serviceThe app is beyond glitchy (until I finally shut off notifications, it was screeching about radius an hour early, every day, for my daughter . Their “help” section reads like it was written by a condescending tween with anger issues. You’ll never get any type of actual help from these people if the app isn’t functioning properly. I assure you, they don’t care. It did work briefly, sorta. Then my son missed his bus, even though the app showed his bus ten minutes away. My daughter’s bus number would pop up, but they have no idea where her bus is? 😂 Her pickup is an hour later than the notification from the app. Perhaps not every school district should utilize an app that isn’t intended or designed for districts that share busses between elementary, middle, high school, and early college. I’m sure the app developers/check cashers couldn’t care less. But don’t trust or rely on this as some sort of safety net. It’s not reliable..E&A'smomVersion: 3.5.2

✓ Great app, could use notification improvementsAs a highschooler this app saves a ton of time waiting around at the stop and lets me see if I’ve missed the bus or not so I don’t waste more time at the stop instead of walking to school. I’m just not sure how I feel about the radius notifications. If my neighborhood was bigger and the stops were further apart it would work smoothly but I have at least 5 stops less then 1/2 a mile away. My only option is to make the bubble smaller and that means I have less time to get out the door so, kinda defeats the purpose. I’d love to see an option to set a point the bus has to cross before I get a notification, or a set road to get notifications for when the bus arrives on that street. Definitely good for elementary students and parents who walk to the bus with them and keep them company, but I don’t personally like staying there for 5 extra minutes because the notification radius is kind of impractical for suburban areas.Alka.maeVersion: 2.6.2

✓ GPS is different from Actual bus transportationI have three kids im school. One im kindergarten amd two im middle school. For my elementary school it work good till today. Waited at the bus stop watch the bus move around on the gps. Did not come to our stop. We took our child to the school. Then my middle school student are waiting at the stop because I noticed that same bus didn’t even come in our neighborhood to Pick students up is already at the middle school. I called transportation to ask what’s going on. I said my kindergartener never got picked up. We saw the bus on the gps while at the stop but never came. After she checked her end of the GPS it said it come to our stop. While going back and fourth with the people on transportation they said their GPS was correct. I asked so your GPS with the app aren’t the same ?!!. She said it was, that it depends if the driver checked off when they came to the stop. I honestly don’t understand how this app works. Since we were actually out there on time. I need the developers to contact our district transportation to make sure they Updating the info correctly!!!.WamylayVersion: 3.4.0

✓ Never worksI’ve deleted the app and reinstalled. I’ve re registered my kids for the new school year. The map is always blank. It goes to a random location 15-20 minutes from our school/home. There’s no yellow arrow or school icon on the map. When it did work (randomly) last year, it would notify me that the bus had arrived after it left the bus stop. It was only useful for the notification that the bus arrived at school. Because I have 4 kids, I received 4 text messages and 4 emails every time it decided to work and let me know the bus had arrived. I never saw a place to get only 1 notification per family/school/bus route. Today it was 23 degrees and our normal wait time of 10-15 minutes was 45 minutes by the time all parents (who’s apps didn’t work) were able to contact the transportation department of our county to find out our bus was having mechanical problems. No notice from the app at all. Yes, we started investigating the delay after about 20-30 minutes. For those who care, the bus finally arrived at our bus stop 1 hour and 35 minutes late after the parents decided to drive kids themselves..Treacy4Version: 2.4.3

✓ Unreliable more often than notWe’ve been using this app since the start of last school year and they have done little to nothing about being a consistent, reliable source for the location of your child. This year, so far, they haven’t gotten my child’s bus substitutions nor location correct. We live in a suburb, school dismissed 30 minutes ago, and the bus our son is supposedly on is currently showing clear across the major city lines at a different elementary school. We frequently have to call the school itself to get a location on our child. We receive notifications about the substitution for his morning bus almost 2 hours after school started. You call support to fix the issue and it’s good for a couple weeks at best. We have often seen the location of his bus in the middle of Lake Norman. In. The. Lake. A huge body of water. When the app works, it’s a godsend and 5 stars all day. The app seldomly meets the bare minimum of what any responsible parent would deem acceptable, sadly. It’s trash. I hope our school system dumps the support and promotion of this app and finds something more reliable. More reliable is a low bar considering how poorly they execute their purpose. Oh, I’m sure they are probably making a mint having their broken app installed on our phones. What information are they collecting off us that they can justify such a poor performance? I WOULD HAVE A BETTER SENSE OF MY CHILD’S LOCATION IF I THREW A BAG OF CHICKEN BONES ONTO MY PATIO..HailBrookeVersion: 3.5.7

✓ Works wheneverThis app works whenever if feels like it. Instead of the developers putting out a message that they are having problems, they instead make it look like you’re doing something wrong. I could not login to this app at all this morning, this usually happens sometimes but they mislead you on their error messages. Oh and this is the second time I’ve written a review within the hour because they deleted my comment on here and magically the app started working again even though it didn’t work after deleting and reinstalling. This thing is completely unreliable, honestly we need it now in this day and age because the buses never arrive at the time they are supposed to. They are either early or 25 minutes late. The route also changes in my area because we are all spaced out and the bus doesn’t stop at other stops if they know a kid isn’t getting picked up in that area… this is only okay when this app works so we know when to get to the stop. We can’t be having outages like this when the bus routes change from day to day. Also stop covering this up and deleting my reviews or I’ll let them on the BBB website..Randy_C19Version: 3.5.2

✓ Sometimes helpful, mostly notLast year, a good portion of the time, this app was not accurate. Not even close. One problem is the app is tied to the bus number and not the route number. So if the bus is switched out for any reason and a substitute bus is used, you can’t track the bus that is being used for the route. Even when the “correct” bus is on the route, often the map would show the bus was still at the bus depot or at a school somewhere - a couple of times, it even showed the bus was out on a highway going the opposite direction - only to see the bus coming down the street to the bus stop. But, because our bus drivers were so habitually late, there was no way of knowing if the bus was actually anywhere near the bus stop or not - no matter what the map showed. I eventually just stopped using the app altogether..Wish it worked, really I doVersion: 2.6.3

✓ Sometimes it works....Not sure what the issue is with this app. A few weeks ago it worked about 90% of the time. This week after the update, perhaps 20% of the time. Constantly having to refresh it to try and get an update. Most of the time that doesn’t work either. Earlier this week, I couldn’t log in and requested a password change. I never did receive a notification. I put in a help ticket but didn’t receive a response. The next day, however, it was automatically logging me in again. Yesterday the bus for some reason was on a different route and my child’s bus was a substitute but I didn’t receive information about that either. Instead, we watched the bus drive around on the other side of town. Great concept for an app but it’s so buggy..Bus bus, Where's the bus?Version: 2.7.0

✓ Not reliableAs a person who uses this app to know where my school bus is, there have been many situations where the bus wouldn’t move on the app. During these situations I was unsure when to go out to the bus stop, because I didn’t really know where my bus was. Usually, in these situations I just go out to the bus stop and hope that the bus will come. Although one time I just assumed that the bus was very late, since my bus tends to be late sometimes and just waited until it moved on the app (which never did). I ended up missing the bus because my bus had already came to the bus stop, but I wasn’t there of course. I feel like because of the fact that this happens so much, I can’t rely on this app anymore. Especially because my bus doesn’t have a certain time that it usually comes. Sometimes it’s early, sometimes late, so I can’t ever expect for it to come a certain time. I do think that this app would be really helpful if it didn’t have problems like this. Thank you for reading!!.A little borijg but very fun!Version: 3.5.9

✓ Unreliable app and Unresponsive customer serviceWe’ve used this app for four years. This year has been the worst. In prior years the app worked with minimal issues; however, this year my child’s bus has not been updated at all. We’re in our 3rd week of school and his bus status reads “Not in service”. The first day of school we missed the bus because there was a substitute bus that we were never told about. This bus came 30 minutes prior to our scheduled pick up time. This may have been a communication mishap with the school system; however, in prior years, a substitute would have been notified on the app. Three weeks into the school year, we are still on the substitute bus, but the bus has not been updated on the app. I’ve called the school system twice and was told this is an app issue. I’ve called Here Comes the Bus three times and left two messages. There Voicemail says all calls will be returned within 24 hours…I have not received one phone call nor a resolution. What’s the point in having this app if it’s not providing the information needed?.RhonnieRhonVersion: 3.5.7

✓ A lot of potentialIt “works” but it’s not entirely helpful at this point. If I sit and stare at the map for 40 minutes and watch the bus icon all the way to the house....it’s great, but I don’t really need an app for that. When the bus hits my notification radius, I receive a SILENT notification that is a great little reminder the bus is here but again, if I’m stuck starring at my phone to catch the notification then I can just as easily be standing in the driveway. Why no sound with the notification? Also, my son is in kindergarten and at that age the bus won’t drop the kids if they can’t verify for sure that someone is home. Yesterday I was home but missed the drop notification (due to no sound of course) and the driver didn’t drop my son. Once the bus passes the drop point, it simply vanishes from the map all together. So now I have no kid and a missing bus!.Paul BartkoVersion: 2.7.4

✓ *UPDATED* From a student’s perspectivePreviously I gave the app one star because none of my data would show except the radius. Now I’m bumping it up to three. Why you ask? Because when the app actually *works* it’s a pretty good app. I can stay inside a little longer while also knowing where my bus is at. No paranoia that I missed it or me waiting outside for longer than I need to be. Keyword in the previous sentence is works because the app almost never does. It’s a huge hit or miss. Sometimes the app works perfectly and is synced up with the bus. Other times the bus is nowhere to be found and you’re stuck waiting outside for more than you need to. Also notice how almost all of the good 4/5 star reviews were made years ago.ISEVERYTHINGTAKEN?????Version: 3.4.0

✓ Has potentialThis app would be great if I could use it. My son rides the bus twice a day. At his school they have the normal bus route and an activity schedule bus route. Out of 10 bus rides, my son is on the activity bus 8 times. That means I can only use this app 2 times a week because there is no way to add this other bus route/stop to his name. I have contacted the school about this and they can’t either. As soon as the school told us about this app I signed up. I have had issues where my son has waited in negative temps because his bus sometimes comes early. So he needs to be there waiting incase it does, except then it sometimes also comes late. Like I said, this app has potential and I am thankful for the 2 times a week I get to use it. I really hope they figure out a way to add on a second bus option..CTTBN33Version: 2.7.3

✓ Good app for helping me track the busThis is a good app for helping me track my kids’ buses, however the lag time is sometimes significant. I do like that I can set up to track my stepchildrens’ bus in another school district and get notifications on their bus as well. Again, it’s the lag time on the GPS that is significant on this app. I wish it was better or they would improve it. I have been using this app for 3 years now and it only seems to have gotten worse. Also, if I uncheck certain types of notifications for some of my children, that doesn’t work, I still get the same notification after notification after I have continuously removed that notification. If the developers could improve that, then I would have no problem giving this app a 5 star rating..Tarheel Gal 28Version: 2.6.3

Here Comes the Bus works most of the time. If it is not working for you, we recommend you excersise some patience and retry later or contact Here Comes the Bus.