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Dublin-Holyhead SailRail poor experience

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crosscity

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5 Dec 2011
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586
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In early July I booked return SailRail Advance journeys from Birmingham to Dublin via the TfW website. They were for a couple in my family. The outward journey was for Sun 1st September and the return for Wed 4th Sep. The outward trip was via Stena and the return via the afternoon Irish Ferries ‘Swift’ service. The journey to Dublin passed without incident. Coming back was a disaster.

On presentation at the Irish Ferries (IF) desk at Dublin Port the couple were told the 1350 Swift service had been cancelled, but was not offered an alternative placing on the next IF ferry, but advised to go to the Stena desk at the other side of the Port to get the afternoon 1450 Stena ferry. This would mean an arrival in Holyhead 2h15m later than planned, and arrival at New St at just under 3h later.

They were booked on to the Stena Ferry free of charge. Unfortunately the Stena ferry hit rough weather, and was unable to dock at Holyhead until 2140, 3h20 late, and way after the last train from Holyhead at 2032. Stena arranged a coach and hotel, and the rail journey was completed the following morning with an arrival at New St at 1050 (instead of 2029) so more than 14 hours late.

The couple are furious and are demanding compensation. They found out the IF Swift vessel had been taken out of service at least a week before (so not cancelled because of the weather), and expected IF to have contacted them, as TfW had all their details. This would have allowed them to consider cancelling, or amending the booking for the next day. They were also not offered food and drink on the delayed Stena service, and it took some effort to persuade Stena that they needed to do something with the number of rail-passengers stranded at Holyhead.

How realistic is their claim for compensation, who should pay it and what is the best way of going about claiming it?
 
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WesternLancer

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12 Apr 2019
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6,996
In early July I booked return SailRail Advance journeys from Birmingham to Dublin via the TfW website. They were for a couple in my family. The outward journey was for Sun 1st September and the return for Wed 4th Sep. The outward trip was via Stena and the return via the afternoon Irish Ferries ‘Swift’ service. The journey to Dublin passed without incident. Coming back was a disaster.

On presentation at the Irish Ferries (IF) desk at Dublin Port the couple were told the 1350 Swift service had been cancelled, but was not offered an alternative placing on the next IF ferry, but advised to go to the Stena desk at the other side of the Port to get the afternoon 1450 Stena ferry. This would mean an arrival in Holyhead 2h15m later than planned, and arrival at New St at just under 3h later.

They were booked on to the Stena Ferry free of charge. Unfortunately the Stena ferry hit rough weather, and was unable to dock at Holyhead until 2140, 3h20 late, and way after the last train from Holyhead at 2032. Stena arranged a coach and hotel, and the rail journey was completed the following morning with an arrival at New St at 1050 (instead of 2029) so more than 14 hours late.

The couple are furious and are demanding compensation. They found out the IF Swift vessel had been taken out of service at least a week before (so not cancelled because of the weather), and expected IF to have contacted them, as TfW had all their details. This would have allowed them to consider cancelling, or amending the booking for the next day. They were also not offered food and drink on the delayed Stena service, and it took some effort to persuade Stena that they needed to do something with the number of rail-passengers stranded at Holyhead.

How realistic is their claim for compensation, who should pay it and what is the best way of going about claiming it?

I don't know the answer - but I suspect well worth reading this - right to the end as the forum member takes a matter a bit like this (but maybe not so bad) right thru to the Maritime and Coastgaurd Agency and posts the response. So it may not be worth getting your hopes up but it would at least seem to be a helpful thread in terms of the issues about compensation on such tickets:

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/delay-compensation-on-a-sailrail-journey.126667/

In fact reading that, sounds like the coach and hotel from Stena was quite a +ve outcome!!!

It may be that the thing to study is IF's t&cs? They caused the orig delay I assume.

It may be your family members only other recourse is to travel insurance, if they had it.
 

gray1404

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EU Regulation 1177/2010 sets out passenger's rights if their ferry is delayed or cancelled. More detail can be found here. https://www.abta.com/help-and-complaints/ferry-complaints

They should be entitled to compensation if their ferry is taken out of service. This is complicated by the fact that they had a contract to travel with Irish Ferry's but then transfered to Stenna. The starting point would be to complain to the ferry company. I would personally complain to both.
 

alastair

Member
Joined
14 Oct 2010
Messages
440
Location
Dartmouth
In early July I booked return SailRail Advance journeys from Birmingham to Dublin via the TfW website. They were for a couple in my family. The outward journey was for Sun 1st September and the return for Wed 4th Sep. The outward trip was via Stena and the return via the afternoon Irish Ferries ‘Swift’ service. The journey to Dublin passed without incident. Coming back was a disaster.

On presentation at the Irish Ferries (IF) desk at Dublin Port the couple were told the 1350 Swift service had been cancelled, but was not offered an alternative placing on the next IF ferry, but advised to go to the Stena desk at the other side of the Port to get the afternoon 1450 Stena ferry. This would mean an arrival in Holyhead 2h15m later than planned, and arrival at New St at just under 3h later.

They were booked on to the Stena Ferry free of charge. Unfortunately the Stena ferry hit rough weather, and was unable to dock at Holyhead until 2140, 3h20 late, and way after the last train from Holyhead at 2032. Stena arranged a coach and hotel, and the rail journey was completed the following morning with an arrival at New St at 1050 (instead of 2029) so more than 14 hours late.

The couple are furious and are demanding compensation. They found out the IF Swift vessel had been taken out of service at least a week before (so not cancelled because of the weather), and expected IF to have contacted them, as TfW had all their details. This would have allowed them to consider cancelling, or amending the booking for the next day. They were also not offered food and drink on the delayed Stena service, and it took some effort to persuade Stena that they needed to do something with the number of rail-passengers stranded at Holyhead.

How realistic is their claim for compensation, who should pay it and what is the best way of going about claiming it?

A bad experience, athough I am not unimpressed that Stena provided a coach and hotel. Just an observation really, but as a frequent user of IF and Stena Dublin services, whereas you are correct that if the Swift was out of service it was not cancelled due to bad weather, the important point is surely that if the weather was sufficiently bad to delay the Stena boat in the way you say, then the Swift would without any doubt have already been cancelled anyway. In my experience the Swift is automatically cancelled once sea conditions are forecast to deteriorate beyond a certain point and passengers are directed to the next conventional ferry service. I have often heard it said that IF are prone to cancel the Swift to save money but that's just hearsay (maybe!).

One other tip, although obviously too late now, is that IF and Stena both have a service updates page on their websites which is constantly updated with (in my experience) a high degree of accuracy. It is always worth checking a few hours before departure on the day of travel, particularly if weather forecasts are remotely questionable re. sea conditions. I view this rather in the same way as checking on a flight booking if snow (for example) is forecast.

Best of luck with the complaint/claim.
 

crosscity

Member
Joined
5 Dec 2011
Messages
586
Location
Birmingham
Thank you for your replies. All three organisations have been contacted, so we'll see what happens. Certainly Stena come out of this quite well, as they didn't have to provide the coach and accommodation, although they didn't offer any food or drink.
 

Flying Snail

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12 Dec 2006
Messages
1,625
By the end of August the Swift sailings had been cancelled and removed from the booking engine for the remainder of the season so there was no possibility of it running.

AFAIK there is no Rail to shipping company notification of bookings so your details would not have been available to notify about the cancellation.

IF have a blanket policy of refusing to transfer foot passenger cancellations to their own Epsilon sailings, it's capacity is limited but they will not do it even when there is space. I'm guessing the only reason your party was sent to Stena with a place booked was because of the cancellation, normally with weather cancellations they shrug their shoulders and tell passengers to wait for the 20.55 departure.

Ferry passenger rights are closer to those afforded Airline passengers than the more generous ones UK rail passengers are familiar with.

If you have not you should read the link posted earlier by gray1404. By the reading of that Stena have already gone beyond their obligations with the accommodation as safety related weather delays are excluded:

"
Accommodation
Where a sailing is cancelled or delayed and an overnight stay becomes necessary, the ferry or cruise operator should offer the passenger free of charge accommodation, where this is possible.

This can be on board the ship, or ashore. The carrier is also free to look at other options, such as inviting passengers who wish to do so to go home, or to make their own arrangements and offer to reimburse expenses they incur. The carrier may limit accommodation costs to €80 (approximately £66) per night per passenger for a maximum of three nights.

However, no overnight accommodation has to be offered, or costs reimbursed, where the delay is caused by weather conditions endangering the safe operation of the ship.

Compensation
Ferry passengers (not cruise passengers) are entitled to compensation of 25% of the ticket price, for that part of the affected journey, if their service is delayed for at least:

  • One hour for a journey of duration four hours
  • Two hours for a journey of duration between four and eight hours
  • Three hours for a journey of duration between eight and 24 hours
  • Six hours for a journey of duration of over 24 hours.
If the delay exceeds double the time set out, the compensation shall be 50% of the ticket price. The ferry operator must pay compensation within 1 month of the submission of a substantiated claim for compensation. However, this compensation isn’t payable where the delay was caused by weather conditions endangering the safe operation of the ship or by extraordinary and unavoidable circumstances that hindered the sailing."

Before you go demanding XYZ it is best to find out what you are actually entitled to.

IMO you have no grounds to expect anything further from Stena. If it had been IF I would confidently predict you would have been directed to the (closed) rail ticket office and abandoned with no onward assistance.

As they were rail tickets you are certainly entitled to apply to TfW for delay repay.

Irish Ferries nonsense with the Swift has been going on since they replaced the fast ferry in 2018, the current one is larger but underpowered, slower and plagued by mechanical issues. It has run less than 50% of it's scheduled sailings in the last 2 years.

Your chances of getting anything from IF is zero, the cancelled the sailing, put it on their website/ferry-check phoneline and transferred you to an alternative sailing, it will be end of story as far as they are concerned.

It is fair to say they have a justified reputation for rubbish treatment of customers with disruption. They massively screwed a large number of their customers on the Ireland-France route in 2018 due to the late delivery of a new ship and have so far resisted paying proper compensation to them to the point of challenging rulings against them through the Irish and European courts.
https://www.irishtimes.com/business...ustomers-face-wait-for-compensation-1.3818238
These were valuable high-paying customers so you can imagine just how little they will care about a few sail-rail passengers.
 

Starmill

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18 May 2012
Messages
23,224
Location
Bolton
The consensus from the last thread on the subject was certainly that there's very little you can do unless you're prepared to take legal action. You'd have to accept the cost and risk of failure of doing so.

Ferry passengers most certainly aren't protected well by the law. To my mind the rights of ferry passengers ought to be considered by Parliament. The customers might find it worth their time to write some detailed letters to their MP or any Lord. They could also ask their MP to raise the matter with the Transport Secretary.
 
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