FERRYSAVERS.COM - RUBBISH CUSTOMER SERVICE
I recently booked a ferry trip from the UK to France and back through Ferrysavers.com on line. My experience of using them was so bad I decided to find a way of telling my story. And so here it is.
Booking the ferry tickets
When it came to paying for the tickets on line the page didn't load properly and went into some kind of strange loop. The next day I received an email from ferrysavers saying that the payment hadn't been made and could I ring to make my payment over the phone. OK, fair enough I thought - things don't always go as they should on the internet.
So I rang.
The man I spoke to had an attitude that I didn't like. There was no sign of an apology for the on line mess up and he kept pressing a secrecy button on the phone so I felt like I was cut off but then his voice would re-appear. I told him that this was happening saying I kept getting cut off from him. His reply was, don't worry mate - your not missing much.
Anyway, the booking was made and I thought OK, thats all I really want after all so I forgot about the mess-up so far.
The Outbound Journey
So me and my family set off for our trip to France excitedly. We were driving down to Poole to get the Boat over to St Malo. This was the best option for us with our onward journey after the boat.
We arrived at Poole on time and a member of staff came over to us to say that the boat was delayed for 2 hours, it would be running on half power due to a problem and it wasn't going to St Malo now but to Cherbourg. Cherbourg was an extra 2 - 3 hours journey for us when we got off the boat.
I asked why we had not been informed off this so we could have at least come later to the port. I was told that Ferrysavers had been given the information and asked to tell anyone who had booked through them of the changes in service. I then rang ferrysavers and was told that they had tried to contact me to let me know of the problems.
I asked them what contact details they held for me and they said my land line number, my mobile number and my email address. Now it doesn't take much working out that they can't have tried very hard to contact me given that I received no messages on either of my phones or my email address.
But they continued to insist, we tried to contact you.
Our Holiday In France
I'm pleased to say we had a very nice time on the Vendee coast in France. You'll not be surprised to know that the holiday was not booked through Ferrysavers - phew.
The Return Journey
We set off from our French cottage to travel back to St Malo where we expecting to get a boat to Weymouth. We arrived on time in St Malo to find that we were actually getting a boat to Guernsey. We were then going to have to wait 3 hours for another ferry that would stop at Jersey and then take us onto Weymouth. the whole ferry time was going to be around 8 hours when it should have been 3 - 4.
When I booked the tickets, I was not told about this route that I was booking onto. If I had known about it I would have looked elsewhere for my tickets. I feel very strongly that ferrysavers should have given us as much information as possible concerning what we were booking, rather than just make the sale at any cost to their customers.
This whole travelling ordeal I normally would not worry too much about, if it wasn't for the fact that it was me, my wife and our 18 month old baby that were travelling and it was not fair on him to have to travel for such a long time.
Ferrysavers rubbish customer service gets thumbs down from me.