One of my worst travelling experiences!
I booked a ticket via the web with Adria Ferries from Bari in Southern Italy to Dures in Albania. When I arrived at the ferry I tried to board but was told that I needed a boarding pass. The Adria Ferries office had a light on but there was nobody there. I waited and a substantial time later a man returned. I asked him for a boarding pass, presenting my ticket. He would not speak to me and went and sat in the back of his office. After I protested, he came out of the office and physically threatened me. Luckily there were security staff present with whom I sought refuge. He did not seem very scared of them. I realised that I had entered a zone of illegality at this point. What people used to say about ports in Southern Italy is, apparently, still true. Eventually a police offer attended but made no attempt to seriously discipline the Adria Ferries officer (although did manage to convince him to go away). Shaken I tried then to find a second Adria Ferries office I had been told about which is 2km away from the office I was at (I was, sensibly, at the office where the ferry was docked). There was supposed to be a "free bus" to this office, but it was not running. After walking for an hour without finding this second office I returned to the ferry, but there was simply no way to get a boarding pass without convincing the Adria Ferries officer to give me one, and he was clearly more intent on physical intimidation that on fulfilling the commercial obligations of his employer. I spent three and a half hours trying to catch my ferry that night, and when I finally left the ferry port my ferry was still there, steaming away in the night a few metres away from me - but unreachable. I cannot imagine why I could not board. Perhaps Adria Ferries routinely overbook? Or maybe they simply routinely take money from the travelling public and don’t consider any obligation to provide a service in return? (Some would call that theft.) At no point did anyone question the validity of my ticket (they rather just did their best to ignore it). After a most uncomfortable night (it was very difficult to find accommodation at short notice), I returned to the port the next day. This time the “free bus” was running (if most irregularly), and I was able to find to the second Adria Ferries office. It was clear why I had not found it the evening before. It is in a weird kind of no-mans land, at the end of a truck park, in a portable unit/shack. This is, it would seem, their main office at the port. (If I had not experienced it I would not have thought these things were possible in a developed country like Italy). As soon as I held up my ticket the lady there took evident pleasure in telling me that I had "lost my ticket". Having successfully kept me off the ferry the night before, I was apparently now fair game for dispossession. It was the glee with which she did this that made me realise that my expierence the night before was no accident. The assaulting staff-member is no rouge employee. My experience suggests that this organisation is deeply flawed. I then bought a ticket on the rival company's ferry (Ventouris Ferries). They said I could board their ferry at 6:30pm, which was an attractive prospect given how tired I was by this stage. In fact I could not board until closer to 9, but at least they did give me a boarding pass and did not take my money and then gloat about having cheated me, so I guess I would give them a high relative rating. I later wrote, in one last attempt to find someone of any quality in the company, to Adria Ferries' main office. The staff member there was no better than the rest. He did not inquire into the circumstances of my experience but just started concocting various conditions (some of which did not accord with what is printed in their own terms and conditions) which he hoped would explain why they could take my money and not provide any service. It's actually irrelevant, but it might be amusing to know, that there are four possible times one is supposed to turn up to the ferry. The staff members play with this hoping it might trip a passenger up. On the ticket (in Italian) it says you need to be there one hour before departure. Above this (also in Italian) it says two hours. In English, this time actually in the terms and conditions on the ticket, it says 2 hours, but if you are a group then 3 hours. The company's representatives have a habit of claiming it is 3 hours for everyone but if you challenge them they just go silent because, by this time, they have the money and from their perspective (I can only assume) this is all that counts. Of course this still leaves the question of the official ferry departure time before which these various limits might kick in. On the ticket, sent to me a few days before departure (in June), it said 23:00. A sign at Adria Ferries’ office at the ferry port said the ferry had actually been leaving at 22:00 since February. So applying the various interpretations the time you should (in some warped theory) be at the port is either 7pm, 8pm, 9pm or 10pm. Absolutely no guidance is given to you in the ticket email or on the top part of the ticket that lists the ferry departure time, date, etc. As said, this is all irrelevant anyway because it is just a means of trying to justify behaviour that has no justification ("throw enough chaff in your customers face and something might stick" is the attitude), but it does give a flavour of just what you are up against if you hand over your money to this company. If you absolutely must use Adria Ferries do not book in advance. Only hand over your money with one hand as they hand you the boarding pass with the other. That said, think carefully about whether to use an operation like this. I say that not just because you might "lose your ticket", as the lovely Adria Ferries officer put it, but because you are trusting your life to these people when you step on their ferry. If they behave like this with customers, what are they like with things like safety? As if to underline this point, as I was walking around the Port of Bari (something I had rather too much cause to do) I came across the burnt out husk of the Norman Atlantic. You could still see the charred cars and trucks in the hold. Now I don't know if the company that runs Adria Ferries (apparently FRITTELLI MARITIME GROUP SpA) had anything to do with the Norman Atlantic, but the sight of this reminded me that sometimes "losing your ticket" might actually be the better option when the other one is travelling with an incompetent or fraudulent operator. The good news is that after my experiences in Southern Italy, Albania was a breath of fresh air. There I was very well treated, and people were honest in their dealings with me. I am told that Italians sometimes look down on the Albanians. Adria Ferries would be well to take lessons in Albania as to how to run a respectable business for travellers, that is assuming that the Italian authorities have not managed to deal with these individuals first. I did look online before booking with Adria Ferries, and found no reviews. I hope this might be helpful for others.
August 19, 2015
Unprompted review
