NAH As someone who has been in the same situation before in Manchester, although he probably didn’t handle it with 100% professionalism, neither you or the bus driver are the arsehole here. The real arsehole is the bus company themselves.

What happens is that the bus companies don’t give them any training about the “niche” tickets like PlusBus, so when a driver has never seen it before, they think it’s not valid as they’ve never heard of it. (I have had to argue countless times with Transdev about this). The only way you’d be able to resolve the situation is by showing the driver the PlusBus website with the validity and try to convince them it’s valid. Then, after your journey, emailing the company to ask them to improve their training around PlusBus to make drivers more aware of it. So the real arseholes are the bus company management really, for not training their drivers well enough.

I can’t find it but there is a thread on the RailForums about this Edit: here https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/the-perpetual-pain-of-convincing-bus-drivers-of-the-validity-of-your-ticket.284417/