UPDATE: We have made the decision to cancel all services on Sunday 20th December, as the few services we managed to get into operation today struggled terribly with the conditions in the tunnel. We just could not take the risk of subjecting any traveller to a repeat of last night. We will be running test trains only tomorrow, with technical experts and engineers on board to ensure that we can understand fully how to mitigate these risks. Please read this post for further details.
This weekend has been a complete nightmare for our travellers, for which I’d like to offer a heartfelt apology from everyone here at Eurostar, as we haven’t looked after you as well as we would have liked. We’re doing everything in our power to resolve the situation as best we can for all of those affected.
We’re sorry we haven’t been able to update you further until now, as our priority today has been to try and get those people that were stranded on trains overnight home and safe.
As you may already know, five Eurostar trains suffered electrical breakdowns as they left the cold air in northern France and entered the warmer air inside the tunnel, and as a result, many passengers were stranded in very unpleasant conditions for many hours.
As a result, we have had to cancel all of our services today, which has obviously brought distress to a larger group of our customers, many of whom were traveling to see friends and family for Christmas, for which we are very very sorry.
We will be a conducting full inquiry into how this happened and of our own handling of the situation, and we will be providing compensation to all of those affected.
We’ll be giving a more complete update later, on the services we’ll be running tomorrow and the compensation packages. I have to leave it at that for now, as I need to get back to working with the rest of the team here at Eurostar to resolving this situation further. We thank you for your patience and understanding, and my apologies again to those affected.
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Too little, too late? I appreciate that your personal priority, quite rightly, is to get the service running again as safely and quickly as possible. We are all hoping for that to happen very, very soon.
But where have your customer champions been today? Your Director of Communications? Anyone that could take the responsibility of speaking for the company off your shoulders and make sure that all customers and stakeholders felt well informed throughout the crisis, on the delayed trains themselves, on the ground at the stations involved, on your and others’ websites, on Twitter and Facebook where your customers have been gathering to fill the communications void?
Credit please to your Belgian twitter team @creamoflondon for providing the only ‘human’ voice to customers today, despite having little real information to offer.
But, really, ‘should try harder’ is the overall result – and that really isn’t good enough. Sorry.
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It is encouraging to see the CEO gives apologies, taking responsibility and apologising.
It is not encouraging that instead of taking responsibility for the actual technical failure (not just handling it once it happened) the problem itself “failure of 5 trains” turns into the excuse: “because we had such extreme occurence we were rightly overwhelmed”. Well, no!!! that your trains are so poorly prepared for European weather (NO, the Eurostar is NOT in the Tropics) IS THE PROBLEM, not the excuse.
Worryingly, I recognise the characteristically British way of handling failures: honing the art of EXCUSES.
I have travelled on the Eurostar before and loved it!!
Unfortunately, I have encountered the attitude of not taking responsibility and passing the buck when I tried to hold Eurostar to account for a mistake they made in my booking which they tried to blame every other train company (that provided the connecting trip) for. So I had early warning signs that there may be problems with handling customers seriously.
Eurostar is a wonderful alternative to flights.
I would vote for Eurostar any day over a flight, but not after I hear such horror stories.
The company should do all it can not to alienate potential loyal customers.
My next trip to Paris, this coming Monday was booked at great expense because a business meeting came up unexpectedly.
I dread the thought of taking the trip on monday, or losing the rather expensive ticket otherwise.
A porvaotcive insight! Just what we need!
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The problems on Friday night and Saturday morning may be indicative of a major problem in Eurostar: denial.
When I tried to phone the number for Eurostar just before midnight on Friday I got a recorded message that told me that the number had changed recently, and it directedmme to another number, which also had a recorded message on it. That one told me to ring back in working hours… Since then I hear that the original number was right, and that it was a 247 number…
Someone in Eurostar on Friday took the decision to stop answering the phone to the frantic people trying desperately to find about anything about why their relatives had not arrived at St. Pancras, and why they were not answering their mobile phones. It was several hours from the first missing train to any acknowledgement of a problem, and even then, it came from Twitter, and not from Eurostar.
This is an endemic, congenital, and unbelievably frightening and distressing communication problem, a denial of customer service on a huge scale, a denial of responsibility to people’s rights to know, and a cavalier attitude to ‘oh, it wasn’t a fire, so it was alright to leave 9059 in a siding in Folkestone for hours and apparently forget about them’. The joking comments on the littlebreak twitter site were also wholly inappropriate to distressed relatives.
I cannot think of a company ever, that has failed so badly, and in so many ways, to provide customer service and customer information at a time of crisis. Words fail me, although I see that they do not fail you, Richard. I expect to see the sort of changes that your job empowers you to do, rapidly and decisively. Anything else will be another fail on top of a sorry weekend.
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Well, as a first step in salvaging Eurostar’s reputation after this, seeing Richard resign would do the job nicely. Although I’d also settle for seeing him locked in a pillory at St Pancras for a few days.
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Can you guide on a high definition review website. I got this from my friend looks ok
High definition camera
Bob
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