Dozens of users have reported issues while booking travel to Nantucket on the Steamship Authority’s website Tuesday as reservations for summer travel opened.
Online reservations for the general public looking to get their vehicle to Nantucket opened at 5 a.m.
The Steamship Authority uses a virtual waiting room that allows customers to see their place in line and the approximate wait time it will take before they can make a transaction.
However, once inside the site, the problem occurs. Several users received a “502-Bad Gateway” error before losing their positions and were thrown way back in line in the virtual waiting room.
“After waiting for an hour and 15 minutes. Was in 4th then punted me back to 1,570,” a user tweeted.
“This is ridiculous. 45 minutes in the waiting room. Finally got to site. Waited for it to load. Entered my account info. Booted out,” another tweeted.
“Please call our reservation office at 508-477-8600. Someone can assist you with your online reservation,” the Steamship Authority tweeted in response.
Just before 7 a.m. the Steamship Authority said it was having technical issues with the website. They released the statement below in a tweet;
“We are experiencing website difficulties and our team is working to resolve them. The virtual waiting room is working; we do recommend that if your queue number does not change after 15 minutes, please refresh your browser. More updates to come.”
However, after an hour later, they were still working to fix the issue.
“Update: we are still working to resolve the issue but we cannot book reservations over the phone, we look at your account to verify if your reservation was a success.”
Reservations opened on January 24 for travel to and from Martha’s Vineyard.
Reservations via phone or in person will start on January 31.
