Wightlink fail

On 2nd June, I paid £225 to Wightlink in an attempt to be organised and take advantage of a combined ticket for Bestival and the car ferry to the Isle of Wight.

For the past 3 months, I've been looking forward to the festival, spending money on camping equipment etc, using my final holidays for the year and checking the news and line up information almost daily.

It is now the Sunday before the festival and my ticket still hasn't arrived. I was told at the time of booking that it would be sent out 2 weeks before it began. I called on Thursday to be told that information was wrong and that they were currently being sent out. I should phone back tomorrow (Friday) when they would give me a tracking number for Royal Mail. I mentioned that this was a bit inconvenient as I obviously work every day - the ticket has to be signed for so if it didn't arrive on Saturday I was going to have problems getting to the sorting office to collect it.

Sat in all morning on Saturday. Called Wightlink again to confirm that the ticket was on its way. Got told by a smug bloke called Will that due to an "anomaly" my ticket hadn't been sent out. What kind of anomaly? Just an anomaly. Obviously a company euphemism for "we've bitten off more that we can chew and can't cope with the simple task of matching up orders to tickets". They were currently trying to tidy up "all the loose ends", such as the fact they hadn't noticed I hadn't been sent my ticket.

I asked if they would have realised, if I hadn't called up to find out where it was? Will admitted it was probably a good thing I had. I asked him if he could guarantee that it would be sent on Monday? He guaranteed it would be. He also guaranteed that it would arrive on Tuesday... when, of course, I'm at work. So I'll need to go to the post office on Wednesday before work to collect it. That, obviously, is dependant on everything "Will" has told me being correct and coming true, which given my experiences so far I'm not counting on. If it doesn't arrive until Wednesday I'm screwed, as I'm leaving for the South Coast at 6am on Thursday morning.

There was complete ambivalence from Will as I tried to get him to see that it was perhaps poor customer service to be so badly organised. I can only imagine he'd had the same conversation with so many people he has grown cold to the amount of stress, annoyance and anger the situation has put me under. To be fair my incredulity at the situation saw me struggle for words to convey how I was feeling and I resorted to half-baked phrases like "farcical" - all met with the same weary, disinterested response. I'm now even concerned he'll deliberately ensure my ticket order 'disappears' as payback for my moaning. This is the level of paranoia I've sunk to.

I'm supposed to be getting excited, counting sleeps, making fancy dress costumes and day dreaming about this time next week. Instead I can't even think about the bloody festival because it gets me wound up and gives me a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Thanks a bunch Shitelink.