Beware of P&O Unitholder Scheme fares!

[nectarine]

As a unitholder in P&O, holding some shares entitles you generally to a discount on their fares. But yesterday, checking a Calais to Dover crossing, their unitholder fare was £80 for a one way crossing in ten days' time! I thought this was ludicrous and clicked on the 'check public pricing' link. That gave me the same sailing, but at £40 - half the price! So I rang P&O to check and they confirmed the prices? They agreed it was daft that stockholders pay DOUBLE the fare but, according to their PR people, the £80 was a fixed fare that would not fluctuate whereas the £40 fare might go up. Well it might go up but I doubt a midday sailing would go up double the price unless you were booking a last minute sailing!

So just a warning .... if you have a discounted fare with P&O always check the public pricing as well.

[blackwellm]

The FAQ on poferries.com tells you all you need to know. The smallprint in the unitholder agreement also allows them to disallow discounts on popular sailings (they even get to define 'popular' as well ;-)).

The only advantage in being a unitholder is that you will not be hit by the full price if you book late. P&O keep upping the public's price as they get nearer to the sailing time. This is a relatively new 'feature' - in the past you could get a decent discount (£40-£50) on the Hull/Zeebrugge route. Right now, you can't even book with the unitholder number since there is a bug in the website that gives a high traffic warning, so you can't compare the prices.

If you need to call without the 10p/ minute charge use this number :-  01304 863000

[Martin963]

Yes you do need to be careful.    Haven't booked this year yet but one advantage of the unitholder's scheme is that one can change bookings (or at least you could last year) without penalties.     Which for us was useful last year as due to back problems I had to delay our dates.

But it sounds as though the advantages are waning.   Thanks for the warning.

And I always use the 01304 number!

[ericd]

How many units do you have to own in orderto avail of the discount on Hull/Continent??? and how much would that be? Cheers

[Martin963]

I don't know the specific answer ericd but I've just checked and I have 600 units ("concessionary units").  This equated to the original concessionary shares from way back,  and was the required minimum holding to get 50% discount on Dover/Calais and 40% on Portsmouth/Le Havre.

I seem to remember there was a half-way-house holding of 300 concessionary shares which entitled one to 25%/20%;   don't know what they did about that....

[ericd]

Thanks for this info, will give P&O a ring in order to check any possible sheareholder discount on Hull/Zeebruge

[Martin963]

Perhaps nectarine had a good effect,  because I've just booked with P&O and the web site price was about £120 whereas the unitholder via the phone (and she checked the standard too - same as website) was only £100 (includes the cat in both cases).

Given that one can change the bookings without penalty AND it was £20 cheaper we've chosen the unitholder price.

But I know these things can change from day to day and depend on the mood of their computer.