One of the most stupid travel websites
I’ve recently experienced a very stupid query engine and web interface. I made a booking through directferries.co.uk, asking for a very specific route and very specific days (nothing like flexible dates, etc.). Unlike other searches on the multiple travel websites I have used so far, this one decides to use a price-based algorithm and instead of showing you the requested route and dates first it starts showing nearby routes leaving or returning on other dates just because they are cheaper! So, you have to actually sift through the long list of choices and be careful not to book in other days (as I ended up doing). Stupidly enough I assumed that the first choices are the ones based on my search criteria…Booking a ferry is like booking a train for me or checking the Transport for London so I did not really imagine that if I ask for a train in a specific day it gives me another date first just because it’s cheaper! I did not ask to book a ferry sometime in May!
Anyway, I got very annoyed as I had to pay for changing the tickets, but that’s my lesson to not book through them anymore. It’s true that I should have triple checked before paying but it seems that the website was so confusing that I really did not notice 🙁 Proof that after all these years of intensely using the Internet for all my bookings I can still get fooled by stuff…