Monday 21 December 2009

Eurostar adding insult to injury

"Our strong advice to customers holding bookings in the next few days is only to travel if absolutely necessary," proclaims to hapless Eurostar chief exec Richard Brown in full page ads in today's papers. "If you are holding a booking now and Christmas Eve, we wil happiy refund your ticket." Fat chance - do have a go if you hold a pair of non-refundable tickets as I do and you will be treated to fatuous emails on a par with what it now seems passes for customer service in this outfit. Having forked out for flights - and been speedily reimbursed by German rail for their leg of our journey to Cologne - I don't intend to give up. But given that they want the seats so badly, perhaps they could ensure their website did the job it should?

6.30pm Update: After a lot of fiddling around the Eurostar website, I have found a link here which others messed about by Eurostar might find useful. Of course, it says nothing about those of us due to travel tomorrow, but it does explain how to ensure they pay our bills. I certainly intend to do so. Now I just have to hope that the snow coming down here at Stansted doesn't prevent us making Cologne tomorrow! At least, we seem to be the least affected London airport tonight.

6 FEB Update: I'm pleased to report that Eurostar have finally paid for the cost of our flights and refunded our train fare and an unused London hotel. Once they got their act together in early January, things were much more satisfactory. My letters were responded to by email with promised payments. But there is an object lesson here for other companies in how not only to do the right thing but to be clear from the start that you intend to do so.

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