For the same price as flights to the Gold Coast or a tropical island getaway, Kiwis are forking out hundreds of dollars just to travel between towns in the South Island.
Murchison woman Corrina Matten told Fair Go she wanted to buy a ticket for her son to travel up from Christchurch to visit her.
By car, the journey takes around four hours, going through the Lewis Pass. But there's no longer a public bus service.
Instead, a trip via Intercity involves first catching the TranzAlpine train, going coast to coast via Arthur's Pass, then catching the Greymouth-Nelson bus which stops in Murchison en route.
All up, the nine hour trip was going to cost $512 - and that's just a one way trip.
Corrina says the price for a ticket swallows the bulk of her wages. “That's my week's living expenses, my rent, my phone.”
The alternative would be to book a flight to Nelson and pay for a night’s accommodation before catching the only bus that heads south to Murchison first thing in the morning.
The other option could be to bus with a different company to Greymouth but that would also require staying overnight because of the limited timetables.
“You're either dangerously hitchhiking or you're spending a lot of money,” said Corrina.
“Either way, it doesn't really work out that well for something that is so central, it's ridiculous.”
What really puzzled Corrina, though, was discovering that Intercity was charging $232 less for a ticket through to Nelson, despite it being a further 120km away.
She queried the price difference with Intercity but was initially told by a customer service representative that the two routes weren't the same.
Corrina said she eventually got through to someone at the company who did acknowledge the issue but couldn’t explain the anomaly.
When Fair Go contacted Entrada Travel Group, the parent company of Intercity, chief operating officer Sam Peate confirmed that yes, there there was a problem and apologised for her experience trying to book.
“It appears there was a glitch with our booking system which meant that the price for a trip to Nelson, which should have been slightly higher than a trip to Murchison, was displayed incorrectly.”
But as soon as that was sorted - sadly - this story started going, well, sideways.
It turned out that Intercity hasn't been overcharging people wanting to travel to and from Murchison. Instead, they've been undercharging passengers heading to Nelson.
The Nelson leg wasn't factoring in the total cost of the TranzAlpine train ride, which is operated by KiwiRail and costs $449.
Intercity has now updated the price for that route to Nelson, from $280 to as much as $544.
This certainly wasn’t the result Fair Go was hoping for, because it actually makes travelling around the South Island less affordable.
Fair Go then asked Intercity why it couldn’t put on a cheaper bus service via the Inland Route and remove the need to pay extra for a scenic detour on the TranzAlpine.
Intercity's answer was that it doesn't get any government funding, so while it connects over 600 destinations, it can't cover all potential stops.
And it noted that the price of the two routes are also discounted from time to time.
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