Re: Ferry Good advise?
With regard to Irish Ferries, whom I will never travel with again, be very careful.
I booked a return trip on The Swift Ferry for early December 2007 and the outward and return legs were cancelled as the ship can't do its magic on stilts in bad weather. The outward journey wasn't bad as I had a delay of 45mins in Dublin, but got to Holyhead about 2.5 hours later than planned.
The return trip was a nightmare. On the day of my return, I got a text message informing me of the cancellation of the 5pm sailing and offering me a 2pm slot, which based on my location in the UK, was useless as I could not have made the return road trip in time. The next alternative was about 2am the following day and I was told to get to Holyhead "early" i.e. before 10pm for a 2am sailing! Six hours in lovely downtown Holyhead Ferryport on a winter's night.
On the return trip, I got talking to some of the crew who informed me that in Dec 2006 the Swift sailed on 7 out of 31 days that month, and that for 2007, based on the long-term weather forecast, Irish Ferries believed that statistic would be at least that bad or even worse. So when I made my booking, their own internal information was that the betting was 3-1 against them being able to fulfil the booking, but their online booking system gave no indication of this.
During my 6-hour lay-over in Holyhead, I met a man at the customer services desk who had made a telephone (person to person) booking at 12 noon for the 5pm sailing of the Swift, which was still in Dublin port. He was in Holyhead in a distressed state from 3:30pm until 2am the following morning, and he was never told about the cancellation until he got there at 3:30pm. The attitude was what really got up my nose, "We are not responsible for the weather".
When trying to get information about the return sailing, I phone Irish Ferries Holyhead number 16 times - the phone was answered once by a man who said "Oh, you need customer services" and promptly hung up! All the information I got, scant as it was, came from ringing their Dublin number. I think they list 3 telephone numbers on their website; only 1 ever gets answered.
Never again.
I have since worked out that I could have flown to the UK, hired a car over there, had less hassle, more time to do my business properly and got home earlier for less than what Irish Ferries cost me.