SURAT THANI — The mother of a student has reasons to remain upset with a ferry firm which denied her request to advance her queue to take her son for a surgery.
Krakorn Kraiwong reserved a place for an ambulance transporting Mr Attachai with Seatran Ferry for the 1pm trip on Friday from Koh Samui to Don Sak district. He would be taken to a hospital on the mainland for an operation scheduled for Sunday.
Worrying that his son would not be well rested on the planned trip, she contacted the firm on Thursday to re-schedule the trip to 11am on Friday but the company turned down the request.
''I phoned the call centre of the ferry firm to move up the trip and told the person on the phone my reasons but the staff refused to re-schedule it,'' she recalled.
Mrs Krakorn then contacted Raja Ferry, another operator, and her request was fulfilled despite no reservation.
Seatran Ferry sent its adviser, Wut Sittisurat, to visit Mrs Krakorn and his son at Thaksin Hospital in Muang district on Monday to apologise for what had happened. He blamed his staff contacted by her for the lack of service mind and a common sense to handle unexpected situations.
But Mrs Krakorn said after the visit that she already ''felt disappointed'' with Seatran Ferry as it had no plans to help passengers with emergency cases like her son.
Mr Attachai, a 17-year-old student at Samui Business Administration College, was seriously hurt at his head and neck in a school bus accident on Wednesday. He was sent to Bandon Inter Samui Hospital for treatment but a doctor recommended her to send him for a surgery at Thaksin Hospital.
Her case created an uproar among people on Samui island after it was posted on Facebook by a person named Pichet Klowtanom.
The problem prompted Seatran Ferry to issue a statement on its website on Monday, blaming the staff and promising to set aside space on every trip of its ferries for an ambulance.