Ferry Hopper Nightmare

Maybe try again during their open hours-Italy time?

Or wait til you are there and change it?

good idea thx

your post was at 1:45 am Italy time.

Have you tried during normal Italian business hours?

You already tried to make the change through "My Booking"?
https://www.ferryhopper.com/en/my-booking/#/

(I'm guessing that you did but just to be sure.....)

I have done all of those things. The ferry company cancelled my return ticket due to them removing the boat from the schedule leaving me no choice but to rebook. Ferry Hopper counted that as a change (allowed 1 change if buy Flexi upgrade) even though I didn't choose to make the change. When our plans changed and we wanted to change the ticket, they would not allow me to make a change. It didn't matter what I said to them (by the way via 4 chats no totaling over 4 hours in total (no kidding) and 2 email strings they were not going to budge. The best they would do is refund me 70% of my money. So basically the ferry company cancelled and kept a percentage of all the tickets that were booked on their boat and Ferry Hopper got a cut of that. I am shocked that they would do this and appalled at the stress and injustice of this experience. This experience has taught me how much I value travel agents. I ran a nursing department for years and now am a CFO of a company aka I am not inept and I can truly say that planning this Italy trip has been one of the most stressful experiences I have had. I am hoping Direct Ferries is better.

Not delivering services contracted is a solid reason for disputing the credit card charge.

Sorry to hear of your bad experience, and thanks for the heads up.
I was just coming on to this forum to ask if there was a favorite ferry company/app anyone could recommend on the Amalfi Coast? We anticipate booking at least 4 ferries during our vacation in late April and weren’t sure of the best way to do that. Ferry hopper is one I was just looking at. Better alternatives?

Hello Marie,

I did what I would consider a comprehensive google and ai search on the top ferry booking companies for that area looking specifically at customer support and change friendly policies. I then used Direct Ferries and honestly had a very smooth experience and it took my visa without a problem which Ferry Hopper did not (finally had to use Apple Pay). I am always looking for assurance that if I had to change last minute I could. The Direct Ferries cancel anytime add on seems more change friendly and covers for cancellations but has allowances for changes as well a few hours before departure time...please double check this on your own. I booked round trip Sorrento-Capri and Sorrento-Positano. FYI when searching for return trip options for my second booking, the round trip times that I wanted were not coming up on my search so I booked the trips there and back separately. I was able to scan the barcode on the first purchase to download on to their app and then connected the remaining tickets with the confirmation codes. Everything is on my app and they immediately sent confirmations to my email plus they give you 24 hrs to change your mind like the airlines do. The whole thing took me an hour versus now totaling 8 hours over 5 days to try and do the same thing with Ferry Hopper. Good luck.

Thanks so much for the great info!
Sounds ideal — I’ll definitely check Direct Ferries now. Happy travels!

I stick my toe into this particular thread with great trepidation, because I have never taken a ferry on the Amalfi Coast. I have taken quite a few longer ferry trips elsewhere in Europe, however, and I hopped around Lake Como by ferry in 2024. Use your judgement about whether my input is at all useful. (And if I'm wrong in my comments, I welcome responses to that effect.)

• I thought a traveler could simply walk up to a ticket booth in Amalfi, Positano, etc., and buy a ferry ticket at that point.

• I believe we had a report within the last 2 years from a traveler who had purchased a ticket from Company X and was ushered onto a ferry run by Company Y. I don't know how common that is, but I thought it was interesting.

• I've used the Direct Ferries website in the past to research sailing times and costs, but--as with flights--I think I've always booked directly with the company operating the ferry I wanted to take. It is useful to compare cancellation policies, though; the third-party sellers might have different policies (which might be better or worse than you'd get from the ferry operator).

• My general policy when traveling is not to prepurchase things unnecessarily, because some purchases are non-refundable and--even if they are not--who needs the aggravation of chasing down refunds? My two most common reasons for purchasing transportation ahead of time are the possibility of escalating fares and the potential for sellouts. I'm doubtful that Amalfi Coast fares are variable, but I am less certain about capacity vs. demand.

I believe we had a report within the last 2 years from a traveler who
had purchased a ticket from Company X and was ushered onto a ferry run
by Company Y. I don't know how common that is, but I thought it was
interesting.

That may have been my report. Here's an excerpt from one of our days gong from Sorrento to Amalfi Town;

We found our dock, and the boat was there but it was deserted and so we sat nearby to wait. Our ferry was leaving at 10:20 and the competitor’s ferry-Caremar was leaving at 10:00. At about 9:55 there was still nobody at our ferry to begin boarding and a guy with limited English came over and gestured that the ferry was leaving. We showed our tickets and gestured that we were on a different boat, finally in English, he said the boat had changed and to get on. So, we hopped on the Caremar ferry hoping we were doing the right thing. As we were nearing Positano, OUR boat went speeding by, full of people and arrived in Amalfi well before we did. We had watched this guy intercepting many people and directing them to his boat and we have no idea why, because there was no financial incentive as we hopped on and off with no issues. On the way back, we befriended a bunch of Brits waiting on the dock and they had the same experience, plus their return tickets were for Caremar, but the time scheduled to leave was the same as ours. We all hopped on the Alilauro boat, and nobody had any issues.

And two days later from Capri back to Sorrento;

As with yesterday’s ferry experience, nobody seems concerned with what your ticket says. People with tickets for an earlier, later, or even a different ferry company were hopping on, and the crew didn’t seem to care as they took tickets without looking.

I'm not going to advise people to plan on this, but it was what happened to us.

You can't book the Amalfi Coast / Bay of Naples ferries, simply because there are no numbered seats.

Ferry Hopper and Direct Ferries are resellers that put tickets on sale before the actual ferry operators have finalised & uploaded the new schedules; when they can't get enough tickets, they make up a story.

Ferry companies do not "remove boats" from their schedules. When they stop running because of the weather conditions passengers are partially protected, they can take the first ferry with empty seats sailing to their destination .

Thanks for all the great feedback...As far as ferry companies not deleting boats from their schedules, the message we received was that the company had cancelled our particular route and they did in fact keep a portion of our money. The refund that I was issued was 70% of what we paid.

And yes, many people do just walk up and buy tickets and I have heard that most of the time that works, however we have also personally been stranded on an island because there were no tickets to be had near the end of the day. That was a very expensive night with no toothbrush or PJ's. We are choosing to book ahead because we have a tight schedule and can't afford a mishap. We have also been told that ferry companies don't care if you are swapping tickets but we have also heard the opposite. Guess it depends on how big your group is and how risk averse you are:)

We absolutely agree that in the future we would avoid prebooking anything we could because if you change your mind last minute you are usually out of luck. Plus booking from another country can be a challenge. However we are going to be in Italy over Easter so we are being cautious.

Thanks everyone!

the message we received was that the company had cancelled our particular route

A message from? Ferry Hopper or from the ferry company?