First hand experience

Sir,

I’ve been reading for months in the Banner’s pages about how CalMac’s ferry woes are affecting the island, but as a visitor I’ve just experienced it first hand.

We were on the golf course on a Friday afternoon when we got the abrupt text telling us that our ferry for Saturday had been cancelled.

We did as we were told, and looked at the website: all it told us was why the problem had occurred, and showed us that the next available ferry we could book was the following Wednesday! We tried the phone number we were given, consistently for over two hours but all we got was a message saying that the lines were busy, try again later. We were told in a separate text that we should consider Claonaig – Lochranza, but we couldn’t book a slot.

We were on the point of cancelling our holiday when, after three hours, we finally got through to CalMac, and on asking if they had any idea how long the wait to get on at Claonaig might be, were told, that there was no need to make that drive as it was only the Isle of Arran that wasn’t sailing, and there was space on the Caledonian Isles 18.00 Ardrossan sailing on Saturday!

Now, I understand the problems CalMac have with their ageing fleet, and with a Scottish government that appears to have handled the replacement ferry situation with remarkable ineptitude, but customer communications are 100 per cent down to the company.

Their texts were pretty close to scaremongering, leading customers to believe that the situation was dire, and that their holiday was in jeopardy – I wonder whether the tactic was to paint a grim picture, so that they could appear to be heroes when they ‘sorted’ it?

Whoever is in charge of customer service at CalMac needs to take a long hard look at themselves, as I’m pretty sure some people will simply have given up when they received the texts.

This was bad enough as a one-off for a visitor (although I note they also cancelled our crossing last year), but it must be nigh-on unbearable for those living on the island

Yours,

Colin Boag,

Winchester,

Hampshire.