Please note; all changes from last update are highlighted in blue
LATEST NEWS: EUROSTAR UPDATE Monday 15:30
Eurostar has been conducting a series of test-runs to ensure that the modifications that it has been making to its trains are working effectively.
The test-runs that have been conducted this morning have worked well and if the later test runs are similarly successful, we will be resuming a limited service tomorrow.
We continue to strongly advise customers whose journeys are not essential not to travel, and to change their tickets for travel on a later date or have their tickets refunded.
Please continue to check this website for updated information as we will provide a further update as soon as possible.
PLEASE NOTE:
EUROSTAR WILL NOT BE OPERATING SERVICES TODAY, MONDAY 21 DECEMBER 2009
We sincerely regret to announce that we will not be operating services on today in light of forecasts of further snowfall in northern France.
We have been carrying out test runs as of yesterday and as a result of these tests we now understand the cause of the disruption over the weekend and have identified the modifications that are required.
As we suspected, the acute weather conditions in northern France have caused the disruption. Every year we carry out a ‘winterisation’ programme of the entire fleet which to date has successfully protected our trains. We now know, however, that we need to further enhance the snow screens and snow shields in the power cars of the trains.
We have already started making the modifications and to ensure that these new protection measures work effectively we are conducting a further series of test runs today. Our priority is ensuring that when we resume services we provide our customers with a robust and reliable operation.
We sincerely regret having to take this decision and we understand how frustrated and disappointed travellers will be, particularly those who have been waiting to travel for the last two days.
We strongly advise passengers whose travel is non-essential to change their booking to a later date or claim a refund on their tickets.
For customers who have been unable to travel over the last few days, Eurostar will cover the cost of out-of pocket expenses, for example, hotels and taxis. Full details of our compensation policy are on www.eurostar.com
FAQ’s
We’ve been collating questions from Eurostar’s customers since yesterday and have done our best to answer them below. We hope you’ll find this information useful and we apologise again for the delay in being able to provide them and the inconvenience caused.
When will Eurostars services return to normal?
We have managed to pinpoint the cause of the problem we experienced over the weekend and our engineering team are working hard to make the modifications needed to prevent this issue happening going forward.
Eurostar is committed to getting back to normal services as soon as possible however the service must be robust and that will depend on the results of continual testing and weather in Kent and Northern France. Please continue to check www.Eurostar.com for the latest service updates
How do people go about changing their tickets to a later date?
People should contact their original point of sale for an exchange. Anyone with queries can call our contact centre on 08432 186 186, although due to the current volume of calls, we would recommend that you wait until after the Christmas period to exchange your ticket if you can. Exchanges and refunds can be carried out for up to two months after the original date of departure.
How does ‘first come, first served’ work?
Some people have asked if we will run a ‘first come, first served’ policy for travellers when we do resume a service. This is a process that we only use following extreme disruption. All actual bookings for specific trains and seats become null and void and all tickets for trains during the disruption period become valid for any seat in the same class on any train. However, we know that this situation is particularly unique due to the numbers of people who want to travel in the run up to Christmas, so we are currently developing a prioritisation policy which will take effect when we do resume any services. Details of how this will work will be posted here and on www.eurostar.com as soon as it becomes available. As there will be many people wanting to travel, we are strongly advising travellers against making journeys that are non-essential over the next couple of days.
When will the first come first served be available/ start?
As soon as we are running services, however again we will need to manage large numbers of people to clear the backlog, so please see www.eurostar.com for our latest service updates. We are strongly advising travellers against making journeys that are non-essential over the next couple of days
People in France are being told to queue up at Gard du Nord from 6.30 Monday morning? Is this true? Will the same apply to people traveling from St Pancras?
All trains have been cancelled subject to test results, as soon as we are able to make an announcement regarding the resumption of services we will post the full details both here and on the FAQ section on the Eurostar.com website
As all bookings the have previously been made for this week are now void, what should these people do?
We are strongly advising people without an urgent need to travel to obtain a refund for their tickets or exchange them for a later date. This can be done up to 2 months after the initial planned travel date, from the original point of sale. The bookings for this week are not void as such, but obviously we are not currently running services and, when this does happen, we will be running to an amended timetable, therefore we will need to re-accommodate people as best we can. We will post more information online as soon as we have it re any service resumption. Our main priority at this stage is to work to resume a safe, reliable service for our travellers as soon as possible.
How will this affect passengers travelling from Ashford of Ebbsfleet? Will a certain number of seats be kept for passengers boarding at this point?
Upon resumption of services we have procedures in place whereby we will reserve a proportionate number of seats for travellers from each of our UK stations.
Will passengers be refunded for missing connecting trains?
Under the existing agreement Eurostar have in place with Railteam and other existing operators:
- Those travellers going to a Eurostar destination will be able to use their connecting ticket available to catch the next available service to their intended final destinations, we have agreements with SNCF and the other operators and they will accept tickets that were not used during the disruption period
- for all those who do not travel refunds will have to go back to the point of sale
I need to get to my destination as soon as possible, will Eurostar pay for the flight I have to book?
Your travel insurance should cover any additional costs incurred as a result of the disruption. You can get a full refund for the full cost of your original ticket from your point of sale. A claim for any other out of pocket expenses can be made through our traveller care team by emailing traveller.care@eurostar.co.uk. Eurostar will be reimbursing reasonable out-of-pocket expenses. This will include hotel accommodation (to 3* level), transport (taxis, underground and parking) and meals. This will include flights where it is deemed there is no alternative for travel and will be dealt with on a case by case basis.
I’m stuck in Paris, will I be able to use my ticket in Lille and should I travel there?
There are no Eurostar services operating currently from any Eurostar terminal, including Lille. We are strongly advising travellers to not to travel or to make alternative arrangements. As soon as we are again running services we will provide information on the Eurostar.com website. All tickets are fully refundable and exchangeable from your original point of sale. We appreciate that this is a difficult time for many of our travellers and we are doing everything we can to get the services running as soon as possible. We will also pay reasonable out of pocket expenses. This will include hotel accommodation (to 3* level), transport (taxis, underground and parking) and meals. Please see the www.eurostar.com website for updated service information.
What compensation is available if I have been affected?
We will be offering full refunds to all travellers and covering any out of pocket expenses on a case by case basis.
If I have been affected by today’s disruptions how do I claim compensation?
Please email our traveller care team at traveller.care@eurostar.co.uk with your details
Are Ski travellers going to be catered for this Sunday and Monday?
The ski train is also subject to cancellation currently, and therefore again we would recommend exchange or refund of tickets if at all possible. We will update this site and please visit www.eurostar.com with any information as soon as we have it regarding the ski services.
For the ski train, if we get there in the next few days by other means can the return tickets be used to return back on the ski train?
As all services are currently suspended, we cannot comment currently on whether ski services will run this coming weekend. Please continue to check www.eurostar.com and this site regarding service updates. If we do run ski services, we will do our best to accommodate all our travellers on these services. However, details of these services have not yet been confirmed.
What is being done to ensure that the same problem will not affect my journey over the Christmas and New Year period?
As mentioned above, we are in the process of running test trains, with technical experts and engineers on board to ensure that we can understand fully how to mitigate the risks we’ve been experiencing lately. Our intention is to run a service as soon as we can and an update will be provided later today concerning any services which we may be able to run.
With limited seats available for a large number of customers can you explain how you intend to get each one back home for Christmas ?
We are strongly advising that all non-essential travel is cancelled. We cannot guarantee that we will get everyone back home for Christmas, but we are doing everything we can in terms of contingency planning to ensure that we can transport the most people possible before Christmas.
UPDATE: EUROSTAR BOARD ANNOUNCES INDEPENDENT REVIEW
The Board of Eurostar has announced that it has commissioned an independent review into the problems it has experienced over recent days. The review will be led by Christopher Garnett, former Chief Executive of GNER and formerly Commercial Director of Eurotunnel, in conjunction with Monsieur Claude Gressier who is Inspecteur Général des Ponts et Chaussées. The review will commence with immediate effect.
Coaches to Paris and Brussels
Eurostar has made arrangements for 500 people to travel by train, coach and ferry to Paris and Brussels. We identified 500 people with the most pressing needs i.e. eldery people, people with very young families, and those who had a very pressing need to return home. We managed to secure transport on South Eastern trains travelling to Dover, then coach transport to ferries which will take people back to the Continent. From their arrival point, these travellers will then be transferred by coach to Paris and Brussels.
Obviously the ferries are very busy and we wanted to make arrangements for as many people with the most pressing needs at the time knowing that we do not want to raise expectations for others who were due to travel. This is a one off arrangement and, for those who were and are due to travel, our primary focus now is getting the Eurostar service back up and running as soon as possible, which we are working round the clock to do. As soon as we have more information on that, we will post it here.
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A question that might come up: “What makes -8°C today so much worse than early this year’s -16°C in January?”
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Last night was clearly a mess from a crisis management perspective. Of all services, I had assumed that Eurostar (and Euro Tunnel) would have decent contingency plans to get people out of tunnels – promptly. That said, I would commend Eurostar for doing what it could today – and not over-promising for Sunday and cancelling the lot.
What I don’t understand is this ‘new’ technical problem of the tunnel air :S. I remember a few years back I took a Eurostar from London to Paris, and there was snow, and delays, but the issue wasn’t the tunnel, but the tracks on the French side and imposed speed limits. I’d love to know the scientific reasons for this strange problem!
I’m sure that if people get a proper answer to this (and a way to resolve it), it may reduce fears about bookings for future winter periods, because i cant see anybody booking the ski train after this fiasco, for example!
Anyway, i write this from the comfort of my sofa in Brussels. I lost my passport and cant travel!
One thing I’d like to add: Working through the backlog on a first-come-first-served basis is not entirely fair (by which I mean: UNACCEPTABLE). Surely this should be done on the basis of departure times of the originally booked trains.
More FAIL.
I seem to remember that Eurostar suffered from the ‘cold ambient air, warm tunnel’ problem quite a few years ago and suggested that they had overcome it. Obviously not – what’s different about the conditions this winter compared to previous winters?
Anyway, good luck in getting the service back in order, as over 99% of the time it is a good service as I hope most people will remember.
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First come first served for later trains does seem a bit unfair.
wouldn’t it be fairer to focus on getting people home if they are stuck (eg us in Brussels right now!) and then cancel and refund for everyone else and start fresh once every one is home?
Safety issues.
When we were left in the dark several times for several hours due to the train having no power this actually meant that:
1. There wasn’t any backup emergency electricity to light anything.
2. The power failure meant that we were trapped in the train and the electric doors were sealed shut.
3. Evacuation: There weren’t any luminous signs to indicate any emergency exits/windows to help us to break out. (every pub/club has to have this by law.. why doesn’t a sealed high speed train?)
4. We couldn’t have been able to find our way out in a fire/smoke situation or a derailment. In the event of a problem, there is no doubt in my mind that we would have not been able to evacuate quickly and would have died through asphyxiation in the panic and mayhem.
5. The Emergency Windows are signed on the ONLY outside of the train, so passengers on the inside could not tell which one were which. Many signs are masked by handles. It is also written in small letters.( reading stuff backwards in a panic/chaos is hard).
6. The power failure meant that the Train manager could not make any public address announcements. There are no battery loud hailers on board.
7. None of the staff have any basic medical training or a delegated position to do so. ( A pregnant woman fainted. Passengers were asked if they were medics. A paramedic who volunteered, went to her aid but noticed that although the staff surrounded her – not one of them had thought to bring the medical kit. THEY HAVE NO TRAINING TO COPE WITH INCIDENTS. I found the young staff as polite as they could be in this ordeal but they didn’t know what to do. At times the staff hid in another carriage as they couldn’t cope or make decisions for themselves and at times asked us passengers to pass on information hoping it might makes it way down 17 packed carriages.
8. Staff did not appear to have emergency torches.
9. AS a society, we have had many disaster in public situations the Moorgate tube crash the Reading train crash… the Marchioness boat, Hilsboro… the list goes on. Why doesn’t Eurostar/Euro tunnel have to confirm to basic Health and Safety measures?
You CANNOT POSSIBLY work through your backlog ‘once services are resumed’. You have a duty first of all to allow the people who are booked on trains to travel tomorrow to do so.
“All actual bookings for specific trains and seats become null and void …” Are you suggesting that if the backlog is not cleared by Tuesday 22 Dec, my ticket for that day will be treated on a ‘first come, first served’ basis?!
Why hasn’t the information on the Eurostar website been updated to reflect the information on this website? Are your communications team all taking Sunday off?
I am booked on a Eurostar tomorrow evening (Monday). The information given here bears no relation to that given on the Eurostar website, or on the phone. Am I to understand that my ticket will not be honoured?
It is also utterly, utterly appalling that the customer service line given on the website was closed today. I was perfectly prepared to change my travel plans and fly to my final destination instead, but have not been able to obtain any relevant information on whether this expense would be covered by your refunds policy.
I am disgusted by the way this situation has been handled.
Thank you for all of your comments. We are continuing to collate your questions and working closely with the Eurostar team to get answers back to you as soon as possible
TC said: ““All actual bookings for specific trains and seats become null and void …” Are you suggesting that if the backlog is not cleared by Tuesday 22 Dec, my ticket for that day will be treated on a ‘first come, first served’ basis?!”
My brother is supposed to be travelling on the Eurostar as well that day to join us for a family xmas in London — It would be appreciated if what TC is assuming (i.e. 1st come, 1st served) is true, it will be clearly communicated by Eurostar!
Sarah, I have looked into booking a return flight to Manchester instead of travelling via London. This will cost close to four hundred euros. Does this count as “reasonable out-of-pocket expenses”?
Thank you for this post, I sincerely appreciate it. But, just a minor nitpick, could you make it more obvious what’s been added? It’s quite hard to work out which bit has changed since the last time I looked!
Oh, and your server throws some sort of PHP/database error at me every time I comment – the comments appear anyway, but you may want to get your code monkeys onto this…
We are due to travel to Disneyland Paris tomorrow on the direct train. We are happy to get a refund or an exchange but we did not book through the Eurostar website we went through an ABTA & ATOL travel agent, who we have called and they have told us to call our insurance company. The insurance company tell us that if there are services running then they will not provide a refund as technically we can travel, albeit with delays. As we are not desperate to travel and would rather not risk delays with our toddler stuck on a train would Eurostar compensate us the full amount for the Eurostar tickets and the Disneyland Hotel and Tickets, seeing as they state on their website that if it’s not essential to obtain a refund or exchange dates?
“We believe our travellers know how difficult the impact of the weather has been, we are sure that people understand that that those Eurostar travellers that need to get to their destination should have the priority over those that are perhaps travelling for leisure or shopping purposes”
I am not very sure this principle will be working this week. On Christmas break, the vast majority of travellers need to get to their destination. At this particular season, one can only understand a priority for elderlies, children, pregnant women, disabled people, etc… Please address how the FCFS solution will be implemented, otherwise violence will prevail.
Utterly, utterly incompetent. No doubt Richard Brown is still planning to enjoy a nice Christmas with his family. Does a flight to England (creeping up in price as the hours tick by) count as a ‘reasonable out of pocket expense’?
Well yet another gold star to Eurostar for customers relations. Just keep your customers hanging around so that they don’t know what to do for the best. What a disgusting service!
Well, without wanting to put it as drastically as “f**king up Xmas”, isn’t it about bloody time that Eurostar start providing alternative transport arrangements for those stuck on the opposite side of the channel to their families? A first-class plane ticket would do nicely – I had a first-class (well, Leisure Select) Eurostar ticket, it seems only fair.
As a follow-up to my comment from 6:50 pm – thank you, that’s much better.
if i didnt take travel insurance and what if i buy flight ticket to paris can i get paid back ??
I have the same question as Song.
It is utterly disingenuous to tell viewers on Sky News on December 19 that reasonable expenses will be reimbursed, leave prospective travellers without information over the weekend, fail to answer legitimate questions as to what constitutes “reasonable expenses”, then announce late on Sunday evening that only expenditure such as hotels and taxis will be covered.
I have serious family reasons for needing to travel, and I fully expect my 400 euro last-minute flight to Manchester, booked this afternoon, to be covered.
@ susan We’re sorry but there will not be any services running Monday 21st December. Please contact the customer care team on 08432 186 186 for a full refund on your ticket
@ Tom We will be able to give you an update on the services that will be running on Tuesday 22nd December tomorrow at 6pm as well as the process for the first come first served system that will be put in place
@ susan Your travel insurance should cover any additional costs incurred as a result of the disruption. You will also be able to get a full refund for the full cost of your original ticket from your point of sale.
Claims for all other expenses can be made by emailing our traveller care team at traveller.care@eurostar.co.uk
@ Julius Sorry for the confusion we’re making all new updates in alternative colours to make things clearer
We’ll also speak to our tech team about the errors you’ve been experiencing
@ Sam Unfortunately there will be no services running tomorrow 21st December so your insurance company should be able to provide you with a full refund. Alternatively if you would like to change your tickets please contact the customer service team on 08432 186 186
@ aymspig We will be able to provide you with more information tomorrow about how the first come first served process will work. We thank you in advance for your patience
@ Adelaide Your travel insurance company should be able to cover any additional expenses but you can also email the care team at traveller.care@eurostar.co.uk with details of your claim who will look into your query
@ song If you don’t have travel insurance you should email your claim to our traveller care team at traveller.care@eurostar.co.uk with your details and they will look in this for you
What about people who didn’t take out special travel insurance for this two-and-a-half hour train trip? Will you cover their travel expenses?
Er…the weather forecast in France tonight said NO snow forecast in northern France. Just maybe in the east…More excuses Euroblah?
If I cancel my Wed, 23rd ticket (as I foresee perturbations the whole week…), will I get a refund even if it is not a flexible ticket ? I have no travel insurance.
@susan, yeah, I’m basically reading the “travel insurance will cover this” as Eurostar holding up a big fat middle finger at its customers. Not having a go at you here Sarah – you’re doing the best you can given the circumstances – but at e.g. Richard Brown in his TV interview (here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8422978.stm).
@ Susan If you don’t have travel insurance I would suggest emailing the traveller care team as they will be reviewing all queries on a case by case basis and who will be best able to help with your query. Their email address is travelercare@eurostar.co.uk
@ Adelaide Sorry I don’t have any more information about the expected weather conditions tomorrow but as soon as we have more information I’ll let you know
@ aymspig We’ll be able to update you on the services for the rest of the week tomorrow but I would suggest calling the customer care team on 08432 186 186 about getting your ticket refunded or changed before Wednesday
Thank you Sarah for your reactivity. I sent an email using the Eurostar website form to ask the question. I’ll try to call the number, but I fear it will be saturated. I will try to wait but flight tickets are getting increasingly sold-out or too expensive…
One thing, the email address is wrong: it is traveller.care@eurostar.co.uk
Please update the email adress given for traveller care,
Do not use travelcare @ eurostar.co.uk, that is a wrong email. Use traveller.care @ eurostar.co.uk.
@ David – thanks, I have updated the comment with the correct email address now
Your suggestion that passengers on cancelled services should claim on their travel insurance for flights booked instead takes no account of the fact that standard insurance policies involve payment of an excess on each claim. Why should your passengers suffer this loss? And why should they be put to the inconvenience of making separate claims to you for out of pocket expenses that you are prepared to pay, and to their insurers for other expenses? My cancelled Eurostar journey was actually paid for by a Eurostar compensation voucher from a previous trip – and yet it has cost me hundreds of euros in hotel/flight charges that it seems I cannot reclaim in full.
I am also unimpressed by the total lack of assistance and contact from Eurostar to people in France due to travel to England over the weekend, apart from the infrequent and unhelpful website updates. I am a Eurostar frequent traveller but will not be using Eurostar again until after the inquiry into this weekend’s events has reported and its findings have been acted on.
@Chris : I must be still misreading Sarah’s comment. Please update it, as it’s the ones that are the most readable on the page…
@Chris : Here’s the error message for your code monkeys:
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@David – Thanks, we’ve fixed the problem now and you should be able to post comments without any error messages.
Hi I’ve got a ticket on Thursday 24th afternoon, is my booking cancelled? how does the 1st in 1st served works? there are almost no ferry running on Xmas eve. I don’t want any refund, I just don’t want to spend Xmas alone in the cold in St Pancras…but I can’t afford to go to the station 3 days in advance either, some peple are actually working!!
Hi I’ve got a ticket on Thursday 24th afternoon, is my booking cancelled? how does the 1st in 1st served works? there are almost no ferry running on Xmas eve. I don’t want any refund, I just don’t want to spend Xmas alone in the cold in St Pancras…but I can’t afford to go to the station 3 days in advance either, some peple are actually working!!
cheers
just wondering about my now void tgv ticket from Montbard to Lille where I was due to get the eurostar. I attepted to exchange my ticket this morning (as i am entitled to by the terms of the ticket) but the “helpful” person at the station would only refund the whole journey i.e. tgv and eurostar together. I didn’t do this as I then wouldn’t have a ticket home!
Do I now have to buy a new ticket?
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Got a ticket for tomorrow 12.30 to go to lyon.Does my ticket is cancelled as I have to be there tomorrow? What happen with the 1st come 1ts serve?
Don’t think the first-come first-served is fair when I’ve been waiting to travel since Saturday 9am.
I am a carte blanche frequent traveller and do all my Eurostar bookings online yet I have not received one email from Eurostar about the general status. The only way I know what is going on is through Twitter, this blog (thank you at least for these!), and news channels.
Perhaps when you are holding the post mortem for this unprecedented incident, you will look at your IT systems and set up a link so that you can send out notifications for those who have booked online. A note to members of the frequent traveller programme would be useful as well.
I will not boycott Eurostar in future for this as the journeys are usually pleasant and efficient but surely your frequent travellers deserve better than this for their loyalty!
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Please find the latest update from 6pm this evening (21st December)
Eurostar trains will resume Tuesday, full details & traveller info here: http://bit.ly/8b5y2p
I agree with the previous comment. I had to browse through Facebook and this blog (Sarah, thank you so much for your work) to get information. Thanks to that, I eventually made the right decision. Today, official information from Eurostar went too late. Eurostar has every customer emails, it is easy to communicate with that instead of facebook, twitter, etc…
hi Sarah
My father, brother & I were due to travel from St Pancras to La Rochelle on Tues 21/12 & return on 29/12. Obviously we are not now going to be able to travel tomorrow due to the fact all tomorrow’s bookings are cancelled, and as we’re being advised not to travel in thr next few days anyway (plus my father has heart problems so is in no fit state to keep turning up at St Pancras day after day in order to hang around on the off-chance we might get on a train), will we get a full refund even though our tickets were non-refundable, seeing as our inablty to travel is not our fault? There’s no information about this on the Eurostar website.
EDIT: I meant to type that we were due to leave on Tues 22ND December!
@ Sophie Yes you will receive a full refund please email the care team on traveller.care@eurostar.co.uk
We will be making further announcements at approximately 6pm UK time in regards to travel for Wednesday and Thursday
@ aymspig I have just been informed that in regards to emailing updates to every customer, the system that sends out the emails means that it can be up to 3-6 hours before they arriving in each individuals inbox and as information has been changing so quickly we didn’t want to provide misleading or out of date information.
Please use this post and blog better for posting these crucial updates. Ideally all updates will be put at the top of the post with a time and date as is standard for breaking news and urgent information. eg
**Update 14:29 – 22/12/2009**
Do this rather than putting the updates in the original post in ‘blue’. Think about accessibility and people with screenreaders. This is stupid.
Also well done for FINALLY putting a link to this post as a main banner headline. For 3 day you had to scroll below the fold (and below a load of marketing guff) to find this post.
Also it might make sense to just have one post with information and updates rather than 3.
Re: @ aymspig I have just been informed that in regards to emailing updates to every customer, the system that sends out the emails means that it can be up to 3-6 hours before they arriving in each individuals inbox and as information has been changing so quickly we didn’t want to provide misleading or out of date information.
Sorry Sarah, but this is not an acceptable excuse. Yes, today information has been changing but I haven’t received ANY information from Eurostar. A simple message alerting people to delays or interruption of service and advice where to check for updates would have been a (good) start ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE SERVICE PROBLEMS.
I also agree with Cian’s comment about identifying updates on this blog.
@TC – Oh come on – i didn’t think I’d be coming to Eurostar’s rescue, but the issues have been all over the news, and has been since Saturday morning. If you can check your emails you can check the news. An email from Eurostar would have been vague (due to the constantly changing information) and wouldn’t have been any more useful and potentially would have been a source of confusion.
What i am sure (hint hint, Eurostar) Eurostar will do is send out an email once things settle down apologising to everybody and making it crystal clear that though technical problems happen, it can not be allowed to escalate into the mess it has been.
@william
sure, it’s been on tv from 4 o’clock on Saturday morning, and believe me I have been glancing at my screens every other minute for 8 hours…that’s long when you don’t know if the passengers trapped under the tunnel are dead or alive.
Won’t defend Eurostar communication EVER, got a couple more grey hair this weekend.
Thanks again to the twitter community, all worried together, left in the dark all night.
I don’t care about apologies, I want my family gathered for Xmas, and that’s all that matters; to me and to the whole cross border community who is the core base of your customer, don’t neglect us.
Re Willian D’s comment: You are not coming to Eurostar’s rescue. When service was disrupted last January, I rang customer services in Paris and was told that the service was running normally. It wasn’t. My train and lots of others were cancelled on the day I was due to travel.
It is precisely because of other media – and not from Eurostar – that anyone knows what is happening. People who book online provide phone numbers and email addresses so it is easy to send an alert. Airlines and taxis can do this, so why not Eurostar? Holiday-makers are not necessarily online all the time and may not understand local news broadcasts but many have a mobile phone.
Personally, an apology after the event doesn’t change much for me. I would rather have heard from Eurostar directly that my ticket had been cancelled. Not everyone is on Twitter or knows about this blog!
You both make fair points.
Eurostar has a lot of hard work to get back the trust.
I will continue to travel with them from Brussels Lille and London as I’ve found, over the years, they’ve been a lot better with punctuality, service and refunds when things haven’t been perfect, than any UK train I’ve ever taken
perhaps it’s just me buy I find no one and nothing is perfect – not least me! Things go badly wrong when I travel, when I go to a hospital or even when I buy a car. I have yet to find anything perfect. Eurostar on the whole works.
Hopefully the hard lesssons will he learnt, and that will be worth a billion apologies to me.
@ TC Eurostar sent out a communication to all passengers (those who provided them with a valid email address)travelling with them from 19th up to and including Christmas eve
This email detailed the status and where to check for updates. If for some reason you never received this, you can let me know your email address and Eurostar will check that they have the correct info and will validate whether or not this was sent to you.
@ TC Just to confirm this email was sent yesterday evening
Sarah, thank you for your reply. Eurostar has my email address as I book all my tickets online and I am a frequent traveller member. I’ll try and check what details Eurostar has for me when I’m at the terminal tomorrow.
Thanks for all your good work!
I was able to catch the Eurostar towards Paris at 14:04 as I was due to travel on Sunday.
You should tell your customers that the travel takes longer as well, as I missed a correspondance much cheaper. Besides, I had to help out a girl from Cyprus who was supposed to go down at Calais, but the “Chef de train” announced it was only a service stop, and no one should go down. We tried to get her out at Lille, but the door of the car we were in didnt open. I had to stick with her to help her catch the next train back, and we manages to get her on the last train towards Calais.
This is how I learned the following: the desk person said that they were not even told there would be traffic today… So not only external is crap but internal as well… Hope things are gonna get better
Hi Sarah,
Could you make sure we get some information about the criteria by which decisions on reimbursing expenses on a case-by-case basis will be made? Having got it so terribly wrong in the heat of the crisis, I think Eurostar needs total transparency from now on.
Thanks,
Susan
@ Susan I’m sorry I don’t have any more information that I can give you on how the claims for expenses will be reviewed
Could you answer the question about reciprocal agreements for British trains please? It appears that SNCF are honouring reservations on French trains and I was just wondering what is happening on the UK side…
Susan, I would be interested to know how you get on claiming for flights as I am in exactly the same position as you, having booked a flight back to the UK before Eurostar began operating a “restricted service” (and causing complete chaos at Gare du Nord by inviting people with tickets on the 24th to turn up a day early!!!)
@ Julie Yes the same process will be taking place in the UK in regards to connections. On arriving at your destination you will be allowed to board the next available train.
Will it simply be enough to produce my original Eurostar ticket and explain that I could not travel on the day I had my UK reservations for or do I need any additional documentation from Eurostar to travel on South West trains on Christmas Eve?
P.S. I appreciate the fact that this blog – and Twitter – are the only working channels of communication with Eurostar right now.
Julie, I’ve saved this page on my desktop, as it clearly states “Eurostar will be reimbursing reasonable out-of-pocket expenses. This will include hotel accommodation (to 3* level), transport (taxis, underground and parking) and meals. This will include flights where it is deemed there is no alternative for travel and will be dealt with on a case by case basis”. I’ll post here when I get a reply to my email to traveller.care, sent on Sunday.
Sarah, could you pass on to the communications team that it is vital that there is full transparency about the criteria used to decide on a case-by-case basis? I had serious reasons for needing to travel that I do not wish to post on an open forum, but would be willing to explain to a customer service representative if needed.
Also, thanks for all your hard work over the last few days. It can’t have been easy. I hope you get a decent Christmas break.
@ Julie Yes you will just need to show your Eurostar tickets you do not need any additional confirmation from us.
@ Susan Unfortunately due to the volume of emails to the care team there will be a slight delay in them getting back to you.
I completely understand that you would not want to publish your reasons here but am confident that the care team will understand your reasons for travel.
I’m sorry I can’t be more help but will endeavour to find out more information to clarify this for you
Well, did the British drivers get finally get their meal allowances adjusted???
their actipon will certainly teach management to think twice before refusing their demands!
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