CalMac Reviews 

Fantastic experience with CalMac travelling to Mull from Oban return. We did the journey twice and it was such an easy, stress free journey both times. The staff were very friendly and helpful which made a nervous first timer feel totally at ease. Everything was exactly on time for all four journeys with no hanging about. Beats sitting about in airports any day! Can't wait to go back and explore more of the Hebrides. Thank you for being part of a fantastic holiday CalMac.

Web booking site experience
Major issue is inability to save progress, make a mistake and have to go back to start the whole thing over again
The saved vehicles do not include the various weight / size details so have to entered separately every time during booking process
It is not clear how the saved vehicles are imported into booking process
No way to remove an incorrectly imported saved vehicle during the booking process, have to start over again
No way to check if any sailing is fully booked without going through the whole process of inputting all the vehicle details first.
No simple way of changing route if a required sailing day is full without starting all over again. eg if Ullapool - Stornoway fully booked, so try Uig-Tarbert route
Saved personnel gender female was imported as male when imported into booking process

I seriously wonder if this clunky web site has ever been properly stress tested based on bookings with multiple sailings and multiple vehicles then hitting fully booked sailing times, using people who are less conversant with such technology and are new to the web site.

It took me over 2 hours to finally achieve a booking and I'm fully conversant with booking web sites.

The issues noted above need to be urgently addressed and It badly needs a step by step guide(NOT an FAQ list).

We booked two ferry’s online for travel from Kintyre to Arran then on to Ardrossan. Both arrived and left on time, something which our local bus operator cannot seem to do!
Staff were helpful at all times.
Well done CalMac 🤗

thank us so much to the crew on m.v loch shira for getting my car restarted thanks again

The website is just awful. In this day in age there is no excuse for such an amateurish and hopeless travel website. The fact that it has taken 10 years and the sum of £18million is just mind boggling. I have an account and it doesn't now recognise the email address and password. It did this when it first came on line. Re-appeared again 20/8/2023. Doesn't let you delete vehicles that have been stored. How first time tourists get on with the icon led initial page is anyone's guess. There is difficulty going back and forward between pages, you often have to go back to the initial start page. Utterly hopeless experience. Anyone who thought this was a suitable replacement is out of their depth.

Largs to cumbrae trip on Sat 19th August 2023 0645hrs.the male on the ticket desk needs some training. His attitude is appalling, rude and unprofessional. His customer service is disgraceful.

Ferry journeys between Malaig - Lochboisdale and then Lochmaddy - Uig with an additional trip between Eriskay - Barra.
Ferries were on time and staff polite.

I had to cancel our trip today for medical reasons and received excellent customer service. Yes, I had to wait a while for the call to be answered but that's really irrelevant when I consider how kind and helpful the agent was who handled my call. I only wish I'd written down her name so I could share it on this platform.
More importantly I got a full refund-amazing and Thank You.

Appalling customer service!!
Our ferry was cancelled 2 weeks prior to travel with no communication only a refund (minus booking fee) for the ferry fares, so we turned up to catch the ferry to Campbeltown only to be told it’d been cancelled and there were no ferries until 30th June. We were unable to be refunded for our accommodation for that night as it was too late and had to book short notice on Arran. We are unable to get compensation for the accommodation fees from CalMac because we weren’t waiting for a ferry - beating in mind the next one wasn’t for another 3 weeks! Dreadful communication at all points, other than the staff at Ardrossan who were very helpful and who had also been given no information. Will be avoiding this company in the future. Absolute shambles.

A huge thank you to the staff of the Isle of Lewis ferry from Oban to Castlebay. We had mechanical issues with our van leaving us unable to leave Fort William until the van got out of garage at 11.40 for a 12.25 check in. On calling Oban they said as long as we weren't too late it would be fine. Unfortunately we were very late as in only minutes before the ramp was going up. From the amazing guy at signal box, pier guys n down to the crew on board we thank you so much for still letting us board, chatting away and even having a laugh with us. The staff on board in bar\canteen etc were as always so lovely too. So grateful to you all that we still got our holiday home to Barra ❤️

CalMac website is a joke - not a single page works flawlessly and the software seems totally unable to recall accounts. It’s quicker and easier to phone

Our ferry route was cancelled for the whole month of June with very little notice. Cutting a long story short we had to book further accommodation on Lewis for the first night when we should have been in Eriskay. Although we have been made a compensation offer we are £75 out of pocket. Terrible customer service, company don’t care about the inconvenience they cause just the same jobsworth mantra.

Denice

Just spent over an hour on the cal Mac website trying to book a ferry. The website is shocking. Failed to load pages, changed destination and arrival ports from the ones I picked, wouldn’t go back so has to exit and reload. Still no joy booking a ticket. Worst website I’ve used for years and that includes bobs website, by bobsbasementwebbusiness at draganddropwebsites

I am a blue badge holder and I recently had to change the dates for our Ferry to Coll, and add in some additional dates for other ferries.
I spoke to a chap named Grant Telford, who was honestly the most helpful person!
Instead of keeping me on hold, he called me back, and when my phone battery died, he was extremely patient and went through the entire process again to book everything I needed.
He went out of his way to ensure I didn't pay a cancellation fee, and that we had all the crossings we needed, when we needed them.
He was polite, professional and extremely personable.
Massive thanks for going over and above Grant!

Although I booked online, I had to cancel my booking due to unforeseen circumstances, but their website suggests that you just go through the contact number or on your account online but my order never showed up on my account & when I rang up to cancel and get my refund, they told me that it would go through in 2 halves - well then I got 2 emails through with one saying I have part of my refund and yet the other email is telling me that my order has been amended with another eticket attached for a journey which I asked to be cancelled and refunded, then when I ring them back to tell them about it they just say that it's still cancelled yet where is my RELEVANT email to tell me this & where is my actual refund???

Have used the Mallaig to Ardvasar ferry a lot and booked on line. Just been trying to do that for the last 1hr to no avail🤷🏻‍♂️. In keeping with CalMac the upgrade to their web booking is a disaster, unable to book and given up. Maybe they don’t need new ferries as they don’t want customers?

Don’t even deserve 1 star!! Crossed from Uig to Tarbert (Skye to Isle of Harris). We were first time ferry crossers, when we booked the tickets they asked if we would like a pet ticket for lounge and we just said no as we thought we could just stay in car with our dog - it was not explained that the dog could remain but we couldn’t! We firstly drove onto ferry car loading area and were met by a crowd of men shouting and waving their arms about. They told us to park nose to tail with car in front and car to the side (really caving us in) we were then chapped and when I rolled down my window was handed a ticket saying “here read that” we read it and that was the moment we realised we would have to actually get out of our car and go up to the passenger lounge. We had our dog and my mother in law is registered disabled. We never purchased a ticket for dog to sit in dog lounge as we thought my mother in law could sit in car with him as she did not feel up to getting out car. We didn’t state my mother in law was disabled as we thought she could just stay in the car. We had to try to squeeze my mother in law out the car and make sure she didn’t fall over whilst making sure our car didn’t bang the others. My wife took our dog up into the lounge area and was met by a crew member asking for a ticket to say dog could come on my wife tried to explain we didn’t have one as we wanted to remain in car with dog but he didn’t want to hear it and just said “calm down, calm down”. Meanwhile I tried to get mother in law out the car safely and was told to “hurry up” by the crew members (after letting them know my mother in law was disabled all they could say was well you should have let us know… how were we to know she wouldn’t be able to just sit in the car? No one explained that to us!). My mother in law was made to feel ashamed and embarrassed and was actually terrified to go on the return ferry home encase the same thing happened. Luckily we knew what to expect second time round. We paid an extra £30 to get the bigger ferry at Stornoway to Ullapool to prevent the same thing happening. Thankfully we were better prepared but I must say I’ve not experienced poor customer service and discrimination against a disabled person like it in a long time.

our ferry got cancelled and we had to stay the night before we hot home

Friendly people, amazing fleet operating all these services to the islands. Nice way to experience Scotland, never had a problem in over 20 years of sailing, I sail regularly on Firth of Clyde, holiday in Hebrides, and Western Isles, thank you 👍

We were booked on the last ferry of the day to return to Mallaig from Skye, and due to heavy road congestion, were a little late for checking-in at Armadale. As we approached, we saw the ferry leaving the pier at 17.25, a full ten minutes before its departure time and were threrfore forced to make a 140 mile road trip to reurn to our accommodation. I wish I'd read the reviews on Trustpilot before booking. Whose decision was it to leave before the scheduled time? The ferry crew? My advice would be to use the bridge and avoid Calmac at all costs.