Buying Tickets for Later Sailings

[sgrant]

This weekend we ran into a ticketing problem with BC Ferries we've never had before.

The scenario was that a large group was going on a canoe/kayak trip in the Gulf Islands. Rather than take our cars on the ferries, we use wheeled carts to walk our boats onto the ferries. Ferry staff have a provision for us to check in at the ticket booth, buy tickets for the boats and for us as foot passengers, drive down to the dock, prepare our boats to walk them onto the ferry, and then drive our cars out to the parking lot and walk back in.

Since our group is large and includes children, and all this takes some time, we have to arrive more than one sailing ahead of our intended ferry departure time. So we arrived around 9:00am, planning to catch the 11:00am ferry.

The ticket booth attendants, while being polite and calm, must also process cars through as quickly as they can. We present an oddity as we declare that the car will not be going on the ferry. We have never previously volunteered which ferry we're catching, and it has never been an issue.

However, I can see that if they are expecting 25 people on the 10:00am ferry, and those people actually board the 11:00am ferry, then that's going to cause a serious passenger count and safety problem. But at the ticket booth, they are used to people strongly wanting to catch the next available departure, not a later one. In the exchange between passenger and ticket agent, you have to decisively interrupt the process to point out this matter.

Anyway, our tickets were already printed, for the 10:00 sailing, when I mentioned it. The attendant was somewhat dismayed at us. Apparently BC Ferries' computer system has absolutely no way to switch tickets from one sailing to a later one. This seems pretty strange, and we've never run into this problem before.

On our trip back, I went to purchase our boat and foot passenger tickets at 5:52pm. I was told I had to wait 8 minutes before I could possibly be sold tickets for the 7:00pm sailing.

So does BCF have a new computer system with some rather surprising limitations? Or are we running into something else here?

[Retrovision]

I've run into that problem for years now. When I show up at the foot passenger toll booths at Swartz Bay after they've cut-off sales for the previous sailing to Tsawwassen, they close the gates past the booths until an all-clear is given and they open the gates again to start sales for the next sailing of route 1. Along with this, you cannot purchase tickets at the foot-passenger booths for any sailing of route 1 after the one that they're selling-for at the time. This presents atleast a couple problems that I can figure, such as that the ticket booths and gates are closed seemingly to anyone trying to get to Fulford or the Southern Gulf Islands also, even though the procedures are based on route 1, let alone that you're technically not allowed access to facilities within the terminal without a ticket, which you won't be able to get if you don't plan on catching the very-next sailing, leaving only access to the washrooms and vending machines near the booths until sales begin for your sailing. This has never been a problem to get around for me in the past when I've needed to, but I worry that with TC-required security changes that it will become impossible to get around these strange rules.

[Dane]

Tickets aren't transferable, so hypothetically, the issue shouldn't come up.

Obviously, this isn't quite true!

[Curtis]

Isn't it possible to refund your ticket or something like that?

[sgrant]

At least we have a simple solution.

In future years everyone going on our trip will be informed of this issue, and will interrupt the booth attendant early in the transaction to tell them what ferry we're catching.

I noticed someone at work was selling a reservation they couldn't use. I thought reservations were not transferrable. Otherwise there could be a healthy scalping trade going on.

[kylefossett]

sgrant said:

At least we have a simple solution.

In future years everyone going on our trip will be informed of this issue, and will interrupt the booth attendant early in the transaction to tell them what ferry we're catching.

I noticed someone at work was selling a reservation they couldn't use. I thought reservations were not transferrable. Otherwise there could be a healthy scalping trade going on.

all you need to transfer a reservation is the phone number or credit card number that was used to make the reservation. for example i could actually steal your resevation if i overheard you making it and the phone number you used. all i would have to do is get to the ticket booth before you.