Might not be a scam but sure feels like one
From the moment I authorised the credit card payment and the website responded, "The booking will take up to 24 hours to complete," alarm bells began ringing. It felt like a scam. My immediate thought was, "Surely not. Sembo is part of Stena, the huge ferry company. They must know what they're doing." How wrong I was. What followed wasn't merely poor customer service; it was a masterclass in frustration.
I called the customer service number to ask a simple question: was it safe for my friends and family to book the same destination? It turns out that, despite proudly advertising a customer service telephone number, there is, apparently, no customer service on it. Instead, you are funnelled towards an AI chatbot that cannot answer even the simplest question. Persist for long enough, wait half an hour, and eventually a human appears, only to prove marginally less useful than the bot. Every question receives the same lifeless refrain: "You'll receive an email." Questions unanswered. Problems unresolved. Time wasted.
Eventually, I did receive an email. Not with answers, naturally, but with an invitation to spend even more money on holiday upgrades. Somehow, that reassured me that my booking actually existed. Then I logged into my account and saw the glorious word: "Confirmed." Confirmed! Confirmed enough for my family to book the same hotel. Confirmed enough for us to buy flights. Confirmed enough to begin the visa process. Confirmed enough, it seemed, to commit thousands of pounds.
Then, more than twenty four hours after placing the booking, and therefore after the deadline your own website had given, another email arrived. My holiday had been cancelled.
At that point, I wasn't merely inconvenienced. I was trapped. Flights had been booked. Family plans had been made. Visa applications had begun. I had no realistic choice except to book the same holiday through another operator, whatever the price. Sembo hadn't simply cancelled a reservation; it had detonated my travel plans and my wallet in one spectacular stroke. Quite an achievement.
Naturally, I tried contacting customer support again. Naturally, the chatbot was useless. Naturally, the telephone number led nowhere. There is no UK office. There is no UK telephone support. There is, however, an impressive collection of digital dead ends.
The website promised a refund within three to five days. The follow up email quietly stretched that to seven days. Funny how taking my money happened instantly, yet returning it suddenly required the patience of a saint. Apparently, payments travel by Formula One; refunds by carrier pigeon.
To add insult to injury, because my booking had been cancelled, I could no longer access the chatbot. The support telephone line simply directed me to complete an online form, while warning that responses "may take some time." That phrase deserves an award for understatement. When you've taken a customer's money, cancelled their holiday, left them to pay substantially more elsewhere, and then erected wall after wall after wall between them and anyone empowered to help, "some time" feels less like customer service and more like a hostage negotiation.
This entire experience has been defined by contradiction. You can take my money instantly, yet cannot confirm a booking. You can send marketing emails immediately, yet cannot answer basic questions. You can cancel a holiday with remarkable efficiency, yet cannot process a refund with anything approaching the same urgency. Fast to charge, slow to refund. Quick to sell, reluctant to support. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the system is designed to collect payments, not customers.
If this is genuinely how Sembo chooses to operate, then the company needs to ask itself a simple question: is it in the travel business, or in the business of testing just how much frustration a customer can endure before giving up? Because if that was the objective, congratulations. Booking became booked, confirmation became cancellation, customer service became customer self service, and confidence became contempt.
23 giugno 2026
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