P&O Ferry Rip Off

Salisbury

I was recently stranded in Munich and tried to book a ferry foot passenger crossing 3 days in advance. Unfortunately, P&O closed their website for bookings (which were around £45 for a family of 4). They also refused to answer the phone in Germany or England, so the only solution I had was to travel to the port and try my luck. P&O then stung us for a last minute booking price of around £195. A price increase of over 400%. Their response to my complaint is below. Noting that they had a 1000% increase in traffic (and the fixed costs are paid for through daytime sailings), surely this was enough to cover their costs. I can't understand why they had to increase the cost of sailing by 400% too.

The country is having to pay the price because of other people's greed. P&O are a prime example of this greed. If they insist on such a strategy I suggest that they provide an additional contribution to helping pay the country out of the hole it is in. If others support this approach, please add to this thread and also write to your (new) MP on Friday. A windfall tax would appear to be entirely appropriate. We need to pull together to make such immoral business practices socially unacceptable.

I believe that I may be lucky enough to get these costs refunded by my insurer, so this thread will be of more benefit to others. But the facts remains, behaviour like this is abhorrent.

Many thanks
Salisbury...

We normally operate a day-only foot passenger service but in order to repatriate as many people as possible, we moved to a 24 hour service and have incurred massive increases in the costs of staffing, crewing and fuel for ships that would normally be laid up during the night.

Our staff have been working flat out across the whole of our route network to offer an efficient and reliable means of transport in circumstances totally outside of our control. I am sorry if we were unable to please you on this occasion.

If we can help you with anything else, please don't hesitate to contact us at the address below or by email at the following address: customer.services@poferries.com.

Mr_Lahey

I'd be phoning the police if i were you mate. Pointing a gun to your head and forcing you to pay that much money is bang out of order and thankfully illegal.

Salisbury

Thanks for your support.

I've just downloaded the P&O ferry timetable and note that they already run the ferry service through the night - every 90 mins or thereabouts - have a look on their website! So the argument that they pulled out all the stops to keep the ferries running 24 hours would appear be be an untruth.

With another round of flight cancellations coming, we need to rally together to stop them ripping people off.

Lovetotravel

A business raising costs when demand is high?? And making A PROFIT??

How very dare they! Someone call the A-Team.

dacouch

They mean they don't normally take "Foot" Passengers on the late night / early night ferrys.

They would have had to pay their staff overtime. They laid on extra ferrys to cope with the demand so the ferrys were basically empty on the Dover to Calais runs so were earning no money on one leg of the journey which may explain a lot of the increase.

spiro

dacouch wrote: »

They mean they don't normally take "Foot" Passengers on the late night / early night ferrys.

They would have had to pay their staff overtime. They laid on extra ferrys to cope with the demand so the ferrys were basically empty on the Dover to Calais runs so were earning no money on one leg of the journey which may explain a lot of the increase.

Agree, if you check I think they only take foot passengers 8am to 8pm or even less time. The extra cost will have been around having the buses and staff to move the passengers around the docks because I dont believe you just walk across Calais harbour from the entrance to the ferry on foot. Also passport control (french and english) are probably not geared to cover foot passengers during this time so they will have had to lay on extra staff.

This is not meant to justify the cost but point out that they are not geared for this.
I think another ferry (Norfolk line?) which does not normally take foot passengers at any time hired coaches which you boarded outside the dock, took you onto the ferry and then took you out of the dock at the other end before doing the same think in the opposite direction. This will not have been cheap and I suspect their prices reflected this.

malkie76

They made you an offer, and you accepted. How have you been ripped off?

sam1970

thats still better than what eurostar did...we were stranded in paris (flew with airfrance) and theonly way back for us was eurostar...they charged us (2 adults and a 5years old child)...wait for it.....£585...I had no choice but to pay. the bl***dy government should have interfered at such time to tell the companies not to rip customers off at time of international disaster...instead politician were busy campainging...because of that I threw the voting papers in the bin as soon as they arrived..I have not wasted a minute reading them.

Mr_Lahey

sam1970 wrote: »

because of that I threw the voting papers in the bin as soon as they arrived..I have not wasted a minute reading them.

You rebel.

Haarlem

sam1970 wrote: »

thats still better than what eurostar did...we were stranded in paris (flew with airfrance) and theonly way back for us was eurostar...they charged us (2 adults and a 5years old child)...wait for it.....£585...I had no choice but to pay. the bl***dy government should have interfered at such time to tell the companies not to rip customers off at time of international disaster...instead politician were busy campainging...because of that I threw the voting papers in the bin as soon as they arrived..I have not wasted a minute reading them.

For 2 adults and a 5years old child, booking within 7 days of travel £585 sounds a good price. At that price I don't think Eurostar overcharged you.

Salisbury

malkie76 wrote: »

They made you an offer, and you accepted. How have you been ripped off?

Excellent logic. When you have no other choice than to travel by ship and the prices are non negotiable, what option would I have?

I trust all the emails of support don't travel very often. With 50,000 extra passengers, do the additional costs really amount to nearly £2,000,000 every couple of days? Buses were only needed in Dover not Calais. You do the math.

They'll be doing the same again this week when the skies close again.

The issue of Eurostar is one of capacity, and they manage the capacity through layered fares. When I arrived at the Ferry port at 16:30 ish on the Sunday I caught a 17:45 ferry. The ferry had loads of capacity - the fares were high purely because there was no other option than swim. They closed all other means of booking a crossing. No extra buses. No extra staff. Although I do accept that there was more capacity in the night - although public transport doesn't work 24/7 so I'm not sure how foot passengers would get to the port at 04:00?

Surprisingly, there are visitors in UK who want to get home to Europe, hence the traffic is actually in two directions. The ferries do not travel empty one way.

If you are happy with this approach, then you are entitled to your opinion, but I fear it is a very sad when companies exploit society like this.