That’s not particularly surprising. I assume on the freight side the instability is creating an issue, and that on the tourist side, their reputation is shot to shit, they are still running fewer crossings and people are almost certainly looking to use DFDS/Eurostar instead where they can. I certainly wouldn’t book a P&O crossing (and won’t when I head over to France later this year).
What did they think the reaction was going to be?
Who could have predicted this…
It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.
Their problem is that not only did they treat their staff despicably, they were incompetent. That’s their main mistake. Plenty of people will shrug and ignore how they treated their staff, but when the ferries aren’t reliable they will go elsewhere. The meat of the article is here:
>“I won’t sail with P&O unless it’s the only option available,” says Hannah Pierce whose family runs a haulage company with 35 lorries.
“We had years of really good service with [P&O] but on March 17 they dropped us in it. It has taken so long to get their ships back in service that we’ve now built up relationships with DFDS and Irish Ferries.”
I’m only an occasional leisure traveller by ferry (prefer Eurotunnel) but I’m not going to book P&O unless they’re the last and only option for both reasons: I want to punish them for what they did to their staff, and I don’t trust them to be reliable. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Ethics isn’t the first reason for doing anything in such a competitive business as freight trucking (or holidays for families tight on cash, as everyone is today) – reliability and cost are the main reasons. Ethics, though, is a secondary reason.
P&O is currently failing on all three criteria: it’s not cheaper, it’s much less reliable, and they’re an ethically dodgy company. It’s no surprise their business is tanking.
Good. That’s the consequences of their actions. Personally I would not give them custom ever again.
I want to punch Peter Hebblethwaite based on his name alone. Seeing his face and his actions compounds that.
Schadenfreude
Serves them right. I still don’t buy Kelloggs products for that very same reason.
I’d like to boycott unilever but I’m committed to a 25-year relationship with Lynx Africa.
Deserves to go bust after the way they treated their workers.
I hope the workers have managed to find new jobs and aren’t struggling now.
Well, you can fly from country to country and have an over night stay and probably cause less pollution.
I think the time of the cruise ship is over.
Anything that annoys their savage caveman owners is a good thing.
Oh no. Anyways …
Sacking a reliable crew that knew their ships to replace them with a bunch of unknowns in order to save a few bob.
WHAT could go wrong!?
They thought they could use capitalism to increase their profits. Instead, capitalism screwed them over.
Turns out treating your employees like shit doesn’t win you positive pr, who’d have thought?
No shit. Maybe a very public “we don’t give a fuck about our workers” then hiring cheap labour pisses off the right for their nationalist perspectives of them being British jobs and then the left for the flagrant workers rights abuse.
We’ll leave on our annual sojourn to the continent in September. There is only one thing I know for certain right now. We will not be travelling by P&O. Not then, not ever again. The way that they treated staff & their business ethics is quite frankly despicable. They have joined Ryanair as a company I simply will not use, no matter the circumstances.
So no, I’m not surprised that they’re struggling to win back customers.
I’m a Brit living in Germany and used the Hook of Holland – Hull route because it was so convenient, my parents live in Yorkshire, but I won’t be using them again.
Music to my ears. They will claw back customers over time as memories can be short, but this will hit them where it hurts. More importantly, this will be a massive deterrent to any other likeminded companies who have considered pulling this shit.
Eurotunnel is cheaper, faster, and less scummy.
What percentage of their business represented by channel crossings? How big of a hole does it punch in their finances in reality?
22 comments
Good. Fuckem.
That’s not particularly surprising. I assume on the freight side the instability is creating an issue, and that on the tourist side, their reputation is shot to shit, they are still running fewer crossings and people are almost certainly looking to use DFDS/Eurostar instead where they can. I certainly wouldn’t book a P&O crossing (and won’t when I head over to France later this year).
What did they think the reaction was going to be?
Who could have predicted this…
It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.
Their problem is that not only did they treat their staff despicably, they were incompetent. That’s their main mistake. Plenty of people will shrug and ignore how they treated their staff, but when the ferries aren’t reliable they will go elsewhere. The meat of the article is here:
>“I won’t sail with P&O unless it’s the only option available,” says Hannah Pierce whose family runs a haulage company with 35 lorries.
“We had years of really good service with [P&O] but on March 17 they dropped us in it. It has taken so long to get their ships back in service that we’ve now built up relationships with DFDS and Irish Ferries.”
I’m only an occasional leisure traveller by ferry (prefer Eurotunnel) but I’m not going to book P&O unless they’re the last and only option for both reasons: I want to punish them for what they did to their staff, and I don’t trust them to be reliable. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Ethics isn’t the first reason for doing anything in such a competitive business as freight trucking (or holidays for families tight on cash, as everyone is today) – reliability and cost are the main reasons. Ethics, though, is a secondary reason.
P&O is currently failing on all three criteria: it’s not cheaper, it’s much less reliable, and they’re an ethically dodgy company. It’s no surprise their business is tanking.
Good. That’s the consequences of their actions. Personally I would not give them custom ever again.
I want to punch Peter Hebblethwaite based on his name alone. Seeing his face and his actions compounds that.
Schadenfreude
Serves them right. I still don’t buy Kelloggs products for that very same reason.
I’d like to boycott unilever but I’m committed to a 25-year relationship with Lynx Africa.
Deserves to go bust after the way they treated their workers.
I hope the workers have managed to find new jobs and aren’t struggling now.
Well, you can fly from country to country and have an over night stay and probably cause less pollution.
I think the time of the cruise ship is over.
Anything that annoys their savage caveman owners is a good thing.
Oh no. Anyways …
Sacking a reliable crew that knew their ships to replace them with a bunch of unknowns in order to save a few bob.
WHAT could go wrong!?
They thought they could use capitalism to increase their profits. Instead, capitalism screwed them over.
Turns out treating your employees like shit doesn’t win you positive pr, who’d have thought?
No shit. Maybe a very public “we don’t give a fuck about our workers” then hiring cheap labour pisses off the right for their nationalist perspectives of them being British jobs and then the left for the flagrant workers rights abuse.
We’ll leave on our annual sojourn to the continent in September. There is only one thing I know for certain right now. We will not be travelling by P&O. Not then, not ever again. The way that they treated staff & their business ethics is quite frankly despicable. They have joined Ryanair as a company I simply will not use, no matter the circumstances.
So no, I’m not surprised that they’re struggling to win back customers.
I’m a Brit living in Germany and used the Hook of Holland – Hull route because it was so convenient, my parents live in Yorkshire, but I won’t be using them again.
Music to my ears. They will claw back customers over time as memories can be short, but this will hit them where it hurts. More importantly, this will be a massive deterrent to any other likeminded companies who have considered pulling this shit.
Eurotunnel is cheaper, faster, and less scummy.
What percentage of their business represented by channel crossings? How big of a hole does it punch in their finances in reality?