Brittany Ferries
Reviews and Complaints

Hi I want to inform the costumers service management that I had a very unpleasant experience with my booking. Trough direct ferry. I booked a ferry 2 ways Rosslare Bilbao, on Thursday night 13/7 and didn't received any confirmation. I was in very high level of stress all weekend as I needed to book hotel, and starting been very expensive as was approaching the date . I start contacting the costumer service since Friday, just Saturday i had first answer as was under review. More stress for me, I decided to book the hotel anyway. Sunday on 16/07/ was still under review afternoon I received email saying that the booking is canceled do to some technical issues . Wasn't offered to me any alternatives, another booking or something. So I was left with the money taken, (refund received on 18/7), no plans for my holidays as I don't have extra money to book last minute holiday , crazy expensive . So I am wandering way I have to pay with my time, my holiday "the technical issues "? I have no holiday booked in thins moment . Please, I want that someone from management to comeback to me with some answers, no apologises! Regards Marius Mandachi

We needed to change the name of the primary traveller, nothing else, but were told thats not possible, why? Due to a mobility incident my wife would struggle to travel and I would of gone in her place. We were told this is not possible and would be charged the full amount of the ferry ticket again and the original would be saved for later. Why it would be no good to us later.

Brittany Ferries has to be the worst company ever for customer satisfaction. Regrettably, I have to use their services from U.K.

to France quite often. Currently on about my 10th trip this year, and yet again they never fail to under deliver. Despite leaving comments on the inroom survey on every occasion, no one has ever bothered to contact me to follow up or address the issues raised. I board the Bretagne again today almost 1 month after using the same boat to discover the tv service in the cabin has still not been fixed., does it really take over 1 month to fix the issue.

It may sound a small problem but time and time again I am experiencing atrocious service from this company who have a dont care attitude. I did after all pay extra for a cabin with a tv.

Yet again Brittany Ferries has taken money for a service they are unable to deliver. If there were another company offering sailings on these routes I would almost certainly use it but alas Brittany Ferries have a monopoly and as I say just dont care.

Ref :-

Booking ref : LB06052 Passenger name: MR Lloyd EATON Membership no: V07798

Outbound Sailing Route: Portsmouth-Bilbao

Ferry: Galicia

Departure Date: 02/04/2023 Departure Time: 21:31 Arrival Date: 04/04/2023

EK12ZFU

As you are probably aware of the disruption on board this crossing with the so called (special visitors) as your crew called them. Far from special visitors, our experience on board the Galicia was very disappointing, we could not believe the devastation and trauma this caused not only ourselves but most people on board the ferry crossing having to put up with this for 2 days. What was suppose to be a relaxed enjoyable 2 days at sea on the Ferry was destroyed and spoilt by this disruption caused by the irish travellers. They took over the whole place, shouting, swearing and no control over their children what so ever. We were unable to enjoy ourselves and felt unsafe at times, especially when in the same area as these people. When asking a member of the crew if there would be any entertainment on board they replied it had to cancelled due to the disruption. Surely the company were aware of who was boarding the ferry prior to departure from Portsmouth to Bilbao. When the ferry docked in Bilbao the Civil Guardia and police were at the port ready to deal with these people as they departed from the ferry and were guided to a separate area, so they knew who these people were.

On top of all this, the toilet in our cabin kept getting blocked , it was cleared on the 1st night but on the 2nd night we reported this twice but no one came to clear it so all through the night we had a toilet bowl which was very near overflowing and the smell was terrible.

We have used Brittany Ferry previously, on many occasions and also have further bookings for 8 people on motorbikes with them in September but after this experience we do not feel this would be an option for us. We would expect compensation after this bad experience. Also we did have a voyager card with you previously which now has expired in the name of Lloyd Eaton , membership number S03JE2 since 10/07/2019, could this be reimbursed free of charge as well.

Looking forward to your most welcome reply.

Kind regards

Lloyd Eaton

My partner and I booked 2 x overnight crossings from Caen to Portsmouth 6/2/23 returning 7/2/23. It was a quick trip for medical appts and business. The ticket number was KW99410 at a cost of £394 including our pet dog and the car. We booked a 2 berth cabin for both crossings. On entering the cabin on the outbound journey we realised it was a bunk bed cabin as we are both in out 70's we realised that it would be impossible to use the top bunk accessed only by a ladder! Although my partner did attempt it but worse than that the noise from the engines and the vibration made the cabin rattle at an alarming level and it was impossible to sleep. On the return trip we decided to ask for a 4 berth cabin allowing us BOTH to have a bed we were offered an outside cabin at an extra cost of £27. The cabin was much more spacious but unfortunately the noise and vibration was worse than the smaller cabin so again NO SLEEP, In my opinion these cabins are not fit for use. We arrived back in France completely shattered and slept most of the day yesterday to recover.

Booking reference No. FN71301 Date 19/12/22

After being a regular customer of Brittany Ferries for many years, I would like to bring to your attention a series of incidents that have not only disappointed us but have created a huge amount of stress and anxiety in what should be an enjoyable experience.

Right from the booking process, boarding the ferry and experience onboard, my view of your company who I have always thought highly of has diminished and left me questioning why we continue to show loyalty to a company who appear to not hold its customers with the same regard.

By far the worst experience was on the 15th December when I arrived at Portsmouth ferry terminal with my family only to be told we couldn’t board the ferry as our dog had been removed from our booking. As you can imagine our 9 and 11 year old were devastated as the trip planned was to visit grandparents and it caused my husband and I a huge amount of stress and upset in what should have been an exciting and enjoyable start to our first Christmas abroad in 3 years. Although the captain did eventually kindly allow us to board the ship, the anxiety that it caused having being told some two hours previously by your check in staff that we were not able to do so. This last minute confirmation meant we started our holiday not only amid tears and upset to our children but the anxiety has caused my son to be ill and we have really started to question why it was allowed to happen in the first place.

The staff at Portsmouth said we had amended the booking several times on Sunday 11th December and in that amendment we had removed our pet from our booking. I can say with certainty we did not remove our pet from our booking and was under the impression you could not amend a booking online if you were travelling with a pet anyway. I would also question as to why you would think that we would have booked a pet friendly cabin on board Normandie if we did not plan to have brought a dog with us!

To reflect back on the whole booking procedure, the build up to making the booking in the first place was stressful and exacerbated by the fact Brittany Ferries first informed us their winter sailings would be released mid May when they weren’t actually released until 21st June, meaning we were checking sailing availability everyday for over a month, as trying to travel with a pet is incredibly difficult anyway due to limited availability.

Our original sailing option was to Santander, however after calling Brittany Ferries less than 24 hours after winter sailing being released all availability to Spain if travelling with a pet, was fully booked, forcing us to book a crossing to France and drive down through France to Spain. We were informed by Brittany Ferries, as we were amending a previous sailing, which has rolled over from COVID delays, we had to telephone and couldn’t amend online as we were travelling with a pet. This does ask the question, if we couldn’t amend an existing booking online when travelling with a pet, how could we have removed our pet from our booking?

To then reflect on our experience onboard, we are club voyage members and we choose to be members not just for the discount on the sailings but also to use the onboard meal vouchers which are included in the price. It was disappointing to then find out the restaurant opens at 5.45 and pet owners had to vacate their cabins at 6.00am which left no time to enjoy a breakfast onboard before departure.

I would appreciate your response as to why we were left in such a problematical situation without any real time feedback from your staff at Portsmouth.

I tried to contact Brittany ferries by phone about a cancellation but after three frustrating days was unable to do so . If you are always 'exoperiencing a high volume of calls' why not do something about it? In reply to an email I sent it says'we are receiving a high volume of emails and it may take 14 days to reply'

14 days to reply to an email ? Surely not. It appears to me that customers are being treated with contempt.

R McLean

Booking Ref > HQ25504

My wife and I have sailed with Brittany Ferries numerous times but this is the first time I have need to complain.

We were allocated a disabled cabin on our crossing Friday 10th June 2022, although we are not disabled we are in our 70's and found accessing the top bunk impossible, so got little or no sleep.

Then return journey we were allocated another disabled cabin Friday 24th June, although we did ask to be moved we were told we couldn't

We payed a lot of money for these crossing and would like some form of refund please

Booking reference: HZ74790 - Rosslare-Bilbao 27th May [protected] hrs.

Cost: 681 euros for 2 adults, car + roofbox and outside cabin for 2 nights.

Boat delayed and we did not board until after 0300 hrs on 28th May.

Then we did not dock in Bilbao until just after 1400 hrs on 29th May and did not get off the boat until approximately 1445 hrs. As we had an 8 hour drive to our final destination and would be unable to unload our caravan in the dark to be able to sleep in it we had to stop overnight at Hotel Avenida Zaragoza 29th-30th May - booking reference [protected] at a cost of £44.01. We were therefore one day late to final destination at El Delfin Verde campsite near Torroella de Montgri..

Hi,

I travelled with a group of 61 students aboard the Armorique on the 13th of April 2022. We were in a lounge at the front of the boat. We left our backpacks in that lounge while we went for dinner. My (expensive) headphones were stolen as well as money from the students. Do you have any cameras on board which would allow you to see who came pilfering through our bags? Is there anything I can do to recover some of the money that my headphones had cost?

Sincerely,

Laëtitia Graves

Laetitia.[protected]@gmail.com

It is with regret I write here, I've sent two emails and they say it could be up to 9 days before answering. I've been on and off the phone for so long it's exhausting. I am unable to amend my existing booking on line to extend my visit which is for an important reason...

What do I do?

We had a ferry that left on 13th October and arrived in Bilbao on Friday 15th October.
Upon leaving, my elderley disabled mother left a brand new coat and fleece in the wardrobe.
I emailed lost property, heard nothing. I went to help desk on board, on the return leg and was dismissed. I was told to go to office in portsmouth.
I went and explained, then waited for 30 minutes. When i went back to desk the girl said the guy in lost property had gone home.
Another girl came and took all the details, she assured me she would pass it on to the lost property department, they will check and get back to me, it may take a week.
To date I have heard nothing, its clear you have no interest in any problems your customers may have. Its also apparent that the cleaning crew in Bilbao are just a bunch of thieves,

On the 20th of September I was travelling with my wife and our daughter and after being on the road for over 6 hours driving from Portugal we arrived in Santander where we waited about 1 hour until reaching the check-in counter.

Myself and my Daughter are Portuguese citizens and my wife is from Macau holding a Macao SAR passport although we all reside in Portugal where she holds a EU resident card, the staff without checking immediately assume my wife was Chinese and demanded a visa without consulting the passport in hand.

I explained to the staff that my wife is holding a Macau SAR passport which grants 6 months visa free travel to the UK, however the staff simply refused and didn't bother to check.

I showed the staff the official web site from the https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa where it shows the 6 month visa free travel, I also showed previous entries on the passport to the UK but this was disregarded.

I asked to talk to someone in charge but the staff said the person cannot come nor could he/she talk over the phone.

Being stuck I had no option but to drive from Santander to Southampton by taking the Euro-tunnel. This took us two days and more expenses for travel than original budgeted.

The staff in Santander are clueless and heartless people and the person in charge should be fired immediately for this issue.

I demand a complete reimbursement of our tickets for the trip from Santander to Plymouth immediately plus a compensation in the amount of no less than 1000EUR for the extra expenses we incurred by travelling by car all the way to the UK.

My partner and I booked our ferries through Brittany Ferries with overnight cabins for both trips. We had to pay for larger cabins as the two berth cabins were fully booked so paid the extra. The trip from Caen to Portsmouth was fine. The trip from Portsmouth to Caen was ok until we got to our cabins where there were no towels. We left our own towels in the car and could not get these as it was too late. We were concerned that the cleaning staff will think that we took the towels so I did leave a not saying that there were no towels. My complaint is that we had to pay for a four berth cabin for the two of us and pay extra and there were no towels so imagine if there were four of us. We had to use toilet paper to wipe with. We could not have a shower. Not very nice. This was not a good situation to be in and could do nothing about it.

I have joined Brittany ferries Club Voyage program and every time I go to book I cant access the discount pricing, I have tried from many computers and the same problem occurs that I cant log in as a member only "guest of a member" which will not give me the full discount!
The customer service is terrible! I have had to phone every time to make my booking and this is always a minimum of 30 minute wait on the phone as an international call as I have been in France.
The customer email is a joke with a up to 10 days to answer an email.
They have the standard wording on the website saying they are very busy and phones call will take a long time and emails up to 10 days to respond.

I have travelled regularly with Brittany Ferries on their Portsmouth to Spain routes, and having seen the misleading publicity which they propagate decided to join their Club Voyage (CV) scheme for Spain. The cost for this is a Registration fee £105, plus an annual fee of £125 = a total of £230. However, once joining you then find that they have lots of disadvantageous terms (only for the consumer, not for them) and exclusions in the small print of their CV agreement for the Spanish crossings; for example on Spanish crossings you do not get any discount on the cabins; you do not get any discounts on their Economie ferries, and you soon find that the discounts which you do actually get amount to very little, and unless you make somewhere around 8 crossings per annum you do not make any significant overall savings after taking the £230 up-front cost into account. I thus therefore decided not to continue my membership, when I discovered what a rip-off this scheme is.

Before I did cease my CV membership however I had made bookings for 3 more crossings leaving after my CV membership would then cease. As I was still a CV member at the time of booking these crossings I received the discount on those crossings. Suddenly after I had decided not to renew membership of the CV scheme I received a revised invoice from Brittany Ferries for the last two crossings yet to be made, stating that the discount which I had been given on the last two crossings would be retrospectively re-charged to me, although I had made those bookings whilst still a CV member, and was thus entitled to the discount. They now want to make a retrospective additional charge of £111.00.

I then wrote to make a formal complaint because I believed that they were contravening the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts legislation of both the UK and of the EU. The correspondence dragged on and on and I eventually contacted their John Napton (director UK & Ireland) who claimed that this retrospective surcharge was not a contravention of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts legislation of both the UK and of the EU; but that they assumed in good faith that a customer would renew their CV membership. I argued that this was nonsense because the term in their contract which they were attempting to rely upon was to their advantage only, not to a customer, and that it had not been negotiated with me individually prior to the contract, but instead had been hidden in small print.

They have refused to negotiate any further and it seems that the only option a consumer has is to take them to court for contravention of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts legislation of both the UK and of the EU.

The situation is made more farcical by the fact that on the last return crossing which I made, although I had booked this whilst still a CV member, the return crossing was made after my CV membership had ceased, and they did not attempt to make any retrospective surcharge for that. They are only attempting to make a retrospective surcharge for the next return crossing which I booked whilst still a CV member.

I would warn any other customers considering Club Voyage membership with Brittany Ferries to read all of the small print very carefully before joining, and you will find (as I did the hard way) that this scheme is a rip-off and not worth wasting your money on for Spanish crossings.

I have travelled regularly with Brittany Ferries on their Portsmouth to Spain routes, and having seen the misleading publicity which they propagate decided to join their Club Voyage (CV) scheme for Spain. The cost for this is a Registration fee £105, plus an annual fee of £125 = a total of £230. However, once joining you then find that they have lots of disadvantageous terms (only for the consumer, not for them) and exclusions in the small print of their CV agreement for the Spanish crossings; for example on Spanish crossings you do not get any discount on the cabins; you do not get any discounts on their Economie ferries, and you soon find that the discounts which you do actually get amount to very little, and unless you make somewhere around 8 crossings per annum you do not make any significant overall savings after taking the £230 up-front cost into account. I thus therefore decided not to continue my membership, when I discovered what a rip-off this scheme is.

Before I did cease my CV membership however I had made bookings for 3 more crossings leaving after my CV membership would then cease. As I was still a CV member at the time of booking these crossings I received the discount on those crossings. Suddenly after I had decided not to renew membership of the CV scheme I received a revised invoice from Brittany Ferries for the last two crossings yet to be made, stating that the discount which I had been given on the last two crossings would be retrospectively re-charged to me, although I had made those bookings whilst still a CV member, and was thus entitled to the discount. They now want to make a retrospective additional charge of £111.00.

I then wrote to make a formal complaint because I believed that they were contravening the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts legislation of both the UK and of the EU. The correspondence dragged on and on and I eventually contacted their John Napton (director UK & Ireland) who claimed that this retrospective surcharge was not a contravention of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts legislation of both the UK and of the EU; but that they assumed in good faith that a customer would renew their CV membership. I argued that this was nonsense because the term in their contract which they were attempting to rely upon was to their advantage only, not to a customer, and that it had not been negotiated with me individually prior to the contract, but instead had been hidden in small print.

They have refused to negotiate any further and it seems that the only option a consumer has is to take them to court for contravention of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts legislation of both the UK and of the EU.

The situation is made more farcical by the fact that on the last return crossing which I made, although I had booked this whilst still a CV member, the return crossing was made after my CV membership had ceased, and they did not attempt to make any retrospective surcharge for that. They are only attempting to make a retrospective surcharge for the next return crossing which I booked whilst still a CV member.

I would warn any other customers considering Club Voyage membership with Brittany Ferries to read all of the small print very carefully before joining, and you will find (as I did the hard way) that this scheme is a rip-off and not worth wasting your money on for Spanish crossings.

Writing from Insight Trans logistics. My company uses boats all of the time and now for 4 weekends on the run the Brittany Ferries boat has not sailed leaving my customers unhappy and the drivers having to find alternative methods of travel. why is it that the p&o ferry could sail using the same route but your boat was cancelled? This is causing me a lot of money to have to sent my drivers other ways to reach spain. We are letting lloyal customers down and my sales are down in November/December due to these being cancelled!

PLEASE CAN SOMEONE TAKE THE TIME TO LOOK IN TO THIS OR WE WILL HAVE NO ALTERNATIVE THEN TO GO ACROSS TO P&O FERRIES AND GIVE THEM OUR MONEY INSTEAD.