Ferry fees wrong on dogs

LIKE Peter Waugh (letters, February 2014) I’ve also taken up the cost of dog travel with a ferry company – in my case
Brittany Ferries.

I have no other complaints about Brittany, I think the service and accommodation are first class, but the cost of dog travel on the crossings from Portsmouth do not reflect the amount of work involved.

I agree that taking the dog from France to the UK does incur some work, but we get nothing during the reverse crossing – there isn’t even any preference in loading.

Quite often we have been on the top car deck and the last to be unloaded. The poor dog has travelled for six hours and needs to get onto terra firma as soon as possible.

Brittany Ferries says the cost covers such items as “maintenance of the scanners” and “deep cleansing of the car deck”.

I don’t accept that they deep cleanse the car deck because of dogs (dogs are not allowed out of the car at any time) and the scanners could be maintained from the charges made for the return to the UK.

I repeated to them that I was not concerned about the France-UK leg of the journey. They replied “it is a commercial decision to charge and that they didn’t intend to reply to any more of my emails”.

So there we are, it’s a case of pay up or shut up.

Paul TYLER,
by email