To the editor:
BC Ferries needs to do much better in communicating with its customers.
My wife and I had to cancel our May 23 reservation to leave Port Hardy back to Prince Rupert and then home to the Nass Valley.
We rebooked for May 25 and were told we were fifth on the wait list. But upon arriving we discovered we were actually 20th on the wait list, a circumstance that had it been accurately and correctly given to us, we would have never made the trip up Vancouver Island to Port Hardy.
We were not alone. Other people we encountered at the terminal were also given wrong wait list information. Some were families with small children.
Knowing we had no chance to board, we drove back down Vancouver Island, crossed to the mainland and then drove back up to our home, a trip of four and a half days at considerable cost for accommodation, food and fuel.
We believe that if reservations and wait lists for northern routes were handled by northern staff and not in the south, such problems would not occur.
We also believe local residents should be given priority over tourists on northern routes and that these routes should be considered as part of the highway system. Small vehicles and business vehicles carrying local passengers should get first access to the ferries, even if big motor
homes and giant campers have made prior reservations. We locals depend on ferry travel have to get home or back to work. We are not just taking joy riding vacations.
It is clear there is a lack of capacity on the northern routes. There used to be three ships before the Queen of the North sunk. Three ships are a necessity so there is a back up for excess demand or when one is taken out of service for maintenance.
There also needs to be policy to place people with extenuating circumstances such as medical reasons at the front of the wait list when attempting to rebook.
In addition to having northerners handling reservations for northern routes there also needs to be much better communication between office employees and those aboard the ferries so that all understand circumstances such as ours where we opted to drive back and not take the ferry.
I was gobsmacked when I discovered a computer generated “no reply” email from BC Ferries when we got home after four and a half days of driving. It included a bill for “cancellation/no show fees of $404.70. How absurd. It was so ludicrous that I could only laugh.
BC Ferries should compensate us and the others who ran afoul of its waitlist fiasco for the May 25 sailing. It should also change its booking and reservations system for better communication and coordination and communicate that widely.
Only by doing these things will we feel that BC Ferries has listened, and is changing, and only then can
a mutual feeling of good will and faith begin to be re established.
Des Belton,
New Aiyansh, B.C.
