Post by annabellespapa on Jan 23, 2022 11:38:07 GMT 1
Hi, I was due to travel back Caen to Portsmouth this afternoon, I realised yesterday that I still had things to do here but carried on planning to leave today, however I woke up at 5.30am and decided to extend my stay. Having booked a Flexi ticket I was under the impression that I could amend the crossing up to 4 hours before departure (BF are shouting this from the roof tops in their advertising), so I logged into my account and went to My Bookings, up came my booking but it would not let me amend it and I had to call the call centre, which doesn't open until 10am French time, I could not find anywhere on the BF website anywhere to call their reservations department from abroad all their 0330 numbers on the website even with 0044 in front don't work from France.
I found a number using Google but it was not on BF. 0044 330 1597000 but I wasn't going to wait 4.5 hours, so I booked for Tuesday. I set a
reminder to call BF at 10am French time.
So when I called, I said I wished to cancel this afternoon's crossing and insert the new booking, I was told that because I had already used the outbound leg (on the 17/1)that I could not cancel the return leg. I said I had booked a Flexi crossing but he wasn't having it and said I would lose the crossing cost for today. I said what is the benefit of paying extra for the Flexi crossing that had only the same rights as someone who had booked a standard crossing, I asked him to check with his manager, he did and still said no.
I called my wife in the UK and asked her to sort it out and she did but it cost me a £20 amendment fee and they made it feel like they were doing us a favour.
So only book one way crossings to get the benefit of the Flexi option (two single crossing are same price anyway, so why not)
The other annoying thing is that you should be able to amend online yourself, unless you have already amended the booking already then you have to call reservations in UK hours of business. However the return crossing I booked had not been amended by them or me but showed that it was version 2 of the booking, so I would have to speak to reservations.
Their customer services are only open Mon-Fri, the lady there, Caroline is lovely and applies common sense to the problems with their website, which they keep bolting on new bits whilst not starting from new, the gliches are still there. When I booked for our family trip in February, I made the booking, got through to the payment stage, it even accessed my bank to give a verification code to my phone and then said there was a problem with the booking and to try again, which I did and it happened again, this was on a Sunday evening so I had to call reservations the next morning. I gave over the two booking references, one was already cancelled the other was pending but the reservations lady still had treat it as a new booking and she tried to charge me more as it is a "live" system which constantly alters the price due to supply and demand. This also happened when we travelled last October and I again had to call reservations, so they haven't sorted their website since then, no wonder there are always long waits when you call and what have they been doing to improve their website during lock down when they must of been twiddling their thumbs.
I found a number using Google but it was not on BF. 0044 330 1597000 but I wasn't going to wait 4.5 hours, so I booked for Tuesday. I set a
reminder to call BF at 10am French time.
So when I called, I said I wished to cancel this afternoon's crossing and insert the new booking, I was told that because I had already used the outbound leg (on the 17/1)that I could not cancel the return leg. I said I had booked a Flexi crossing but he wasn't having it and said I would lose the crossing cost for today. I said what is the benefit of paying extra for the Flexi crossing that had only the same rights as someone who had booked a standard crossing, I asked him to check with his manager, he did and still said no.
I called my wife in the UK and asked her to sort it out and she did but it cost me a £20 amendment fee and they made it feel like they were doing us a favour.
So only book one way crossings to get the benefit of the Flexi option (two single crossing are same price anyway, so why not)
The other annoying thing is that you should be able to amend online yourself, unless you have already amended the booking already then you have to call reservations in UK hours of business. However the return crossing I booked had not been amended by them or me but showed that it was version 2 of the booking, so I would have to speak to reservations.
Their customer services are only open Mon-Fri, the lady there, Caroline is lovely and applies common sense to the problems with their website, which they keep bolting on new bits whilst not starting from new, the gliches are still there. When I booked for our family trip in February, I made the booking, got through to the payment stage, it even accessed my bank to give a verification code to my phone and then said there was a problem with the booking and to try again, which I did and it happened again, this was on a Sunday evening so I had to call reservations the next morning. I gave over the two booking references, one was already cancelled the other was pending but the reservations lady still had treat it as a new booking and she tried to charge me more as it is a "live" system which constantly alters the price due to supply and demand. This also happened when we travelled last October and I again had to call reservations, so they haven't sorted their website since then, no wonder there are always long waits when you call and what have they been doing to improve their website during lock down when they must of been twiddling their thumbs.
