DISGRUNTLED passengers have reacted with anger after they say they were not contacted after trips on the Waverley steamer were cancelled.
Waverley Excursions, the charity behind the famous Clyde-built vessel, confirmed it had not been running due to an intermittent fault with its air pump.
A spokeswoman confirmed it had been taken out of service for 11 days from July 20 until July 30, although it was back running earlier this week.
Janet Cunningham, from Stirling, said she had bought tickets earlier in the month after booking over the phone.
However, when she turned up at the quayside on Sunday, July 30 for the trip, nobody was there to tell her it had been cancelled, nor were there any signs notifying of the cancellation.
She said: “I had got the tickets as a gift for friends, but we were astounded nobody had told us it wasn’t running.”
She said the response when she phoned the next day was very vague, though she was eventually offered a refund after declining the option to book for another day.
She said: “It was very disappointing and a bit of a mess. I’m concerned about all the people that didn’t get told and I’m just worried about the reputation as well. I feel that sailing on the Waverley on the Clyde has become a Scottish tradition and I’m concerned for people coming from abroad to deal with something like this.”
The Waverley, the last ocean- going paddle steamer, celebrated its 70th anniversary in June this year and still runs excursions down the Firth of Clyde during the summer months.
Ms Cunningham had brought her friend Gerry McGladrigan and his wife, who had travelled from Cumbernauld. He said: “I asked two people from the Science Centre where I could park for the Waverley and they told us it hadn’t been running for about 10 days.”
A spokeswoman for Waverley Excursions said: “We have spoken with many of our disappointed passengers and are grateful for their ongoing support of our charitable operation. It is not our intention to inconvenience them and our engineers and contractors worked flat out to resolve the issue.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel