Paris Forum: Eurostar trains: Cancellations and Delays 19-20 December

I have heard (BBC website) that there will be NO eurostar trains on Sunday 20 Dec either.

I've just cancelled my trip. The Eurostar money will be refunded, and the hotel have said they won't charge me.

you lucky thing. I booked my holiday through an online travel agent and they told me today I will not get a refund on anything because I didn't buy their insurance. My insurance I today found out doesnt' cover me.

but is this true? I have eurostar tickets here in my hand but I didn't buy them from eurostar directly and I'm supposed to be catching one of the first trains to france on monday morning.

what todo?

any advice or words of encouragement thanks.

also its annoying that the bbc news + eurostar websites are not saying exactly the same things about "the latest" on their websites.

an unknown next 36 hours.

also I'm concerned supposing I make it to france on monday but the french weather stays bad and I can't get back home to the uk. what todo (given a choice)?

"I booked my holiday through an online travel agent and they told me today I will not get a refund on anything because I didn't buy their insurance."

You should study their terms and conditions carefully. If they have accepted your booking for services that cannot now be provided, then there would need to be a specific exclusion in their Ts&Cs for them to wriggle out of a refund.

You should also keep an eye on www.eurostar.com which is the most reliable source of the latest information. If they can't run your train on Monday, they should provide information on how they will deal with that.

Eurostar are in a mess tonight. After all the breakdowns on Friday, they had a train from Paris on Saturday that broke down after emerging from the tunnel, then the rescue locomotive itself broke down at Ebbsfleet. On Sunday they are running test trains only, and Monday's service will depend on how the tests work out. I assume they are seeking the most reliable way to counter the particular weather conditions that exist in northern France at the moment.

Good luck!

>>>I assume they are seeking the most reliable way to counter the particular weather conditions that exist in northern France at the moment.<<<

There go those awful French gumming up the works again with "the wrong kind of snow"...

I hope for everyone's sake all this gets sorted sharpish. To think that just the other day I heard someone remark that European train schedules are almost never affected by bad weather... ;-)

The problem appears to be that the trains' equipment got very cold when travelling in the open in France, but the air in the tunnel was comparatively warm and moist. The moisture condensed onto the trains' electrical equipment, causing breakdown of the insulation.

Short of rebuilding the trains' equipment, there is not much that can be done about this.

Never again will I be making a reservation on the Eurostar.

My wife and I are booked to travel from London to Paris on Monday to spend Christmas with our daughter and grandchildren but our plans have now been thrown in to disaray.

The only way to contact Eurostar is by email (via the disingenuous "Customer Care" section of their website) as their call centre is completely inadequate; after wasting nearly fifty minutes on hold I gave up after hearing one time too many that my call was important to them: so important that I was unable to progress any further than their robotic answering machine and reach someone with a pulse.

That a train like the Eurostar is so adversely affected by cold weather is beyond comprehension and completely inexcusable. The engineers who could not foresee a problem caused by fluctuations in temperature during the colder months should be enlisted to staff the Eurostar call centre on occasions such as this and see how their incompetence and negligence effects us, the travelling public.

The offer to use my tickets any time in the next two months is downright insulting and I would rather swim The Channel than patronise Eurostar again. In future I would prefer to take my chances with British Airways who would could legitimately cancel flights due to weather conditions. Coupled with the fact they are obviously too inept to effect strike action they should deliver me to my destination in a timely and almost efficient fashion.

Eurostar have not yet said that they have cancelled trains tomorrow (monday 21st), my boyfriend and I have a ticket for the 8:00pm train from St Pancras, fingers crossed!!

JMcL747:

I suppose that you have the competence to design a train that can cope with weather conditions that are obviously more severe than any since the Channel Tunnel opened? The problem of condensation onto the trains' electrical equipment was obviously not foreseen by the many highly trained engineers who worked on the design. I doubt you could have done any better.

And I don't think you would find any airline that, taken overall, is more reliable than the trains.

Thanks Richard, the travel agents are looking into alternative methods of reaching my destination, well they have less than 18 hours to let me know what that means...!! Like Katy has posted, I too am keeping things crossed...

If trains can cope ok in Canada, then why not in our tunnel? Surely the Canadians have tunnels too!!