Eurostar cancellation - my rights

Hi all
Our return Eurostar from Paris has been cancelled next Wednesday (10:12 from Gare du Nord).

As normal, Eurostar are not clearly explaining my rights as a passenger. As I understand it, I am entitled to "continuing or re-routing your journey under comparable conditions to reach your final destination at the earliest opportunity, at no additional cost"

They have provided a portal for rebooking but the only train with availability is at 21.00, 11 hours later.

Am I correct to think this is not the 'earliest opportunity' as I could get a flight much earlier to reach London? 11 hours feels like an unreasonable delay.

What should I actually do in this case? I'm going to call Eurostar today (but think unlikely to get through as their lines are so busy).

If they provide no satisfactory response on the phone, is my only option to go in person to Gare du Nord next Tuesday and ask staff? And if they fail to reroute I book a flight and then claim back the costs?

Currently I am not accepting their refund as I know this then removes my right to rerouting.

ES are not altogether totally brilliant at dealing with the Passenger Rights Regulation but the understanding has always been that you are entitled to rail travel, rather than air travel. And it is also their policy to offer new reservations sometimes many days after the original after the cancelled journey.

There are no easy options here, if you do manage to get through by phone you could seek to be rerouted via Lille, ie. Paris -Lille - London. You could also have the debate with ES staff at Paris at the Gare du Nord on the day. As spares seats arise from cancellations etc. etc this has been known to work. But it may mean you have to hang round Gare du Nord for most of the day waiting for something to happen.

If you really must be back in London by afternoon that day, in all honesty you are probably better off going by air and just put it down to experience (or seek travel insurance compensation, if you have it). Another, possibly less hassle approach, is to go back by ferry the day before, eg. night ferry to Portsmouth or a day ferry from Dieppe.

Definitely never accept a refund, as you say.

The least effective approach seems to be get cross with the ES staff at Paris. They've seen it all before and you may end up being ejected from the terminal!

Gerald Fiennes said:

ES are not altogether totally brilliant at dealing with the Passenger Rights Regulation but the understanding has always been that you are entitled to rail travel, rather than air travel. And it is also their policy to offer new reservations sometimes many days after the original after the cancelled journey.

Click to expand...

They might be correct legally, but given that they are the only game in town when it comes to rail across the channel morally it seems a bit unreasonable not to let people fly (or even use a ferry).

Interesting that European Sleeper do seem to consider flights to be appropriate alternative transport, if not too expensive.

otter11 said:

They have provided a portal for rebooking but the only train with availability is at 21.00, 11 hours later.

Am I correct to think this is not the 'earliest opportunity' as I could get a flight much earlier to reach London?

Click to expand...

It's not the earliest opportunity, since they currently have free seats on the 15:12 departure. They're in Premium, which I guess you didn't book. Rebooking online is only possible in the same class and Eurostar stay silent about their obligation to offer any seat if your booked class isn't available. Call them.

Thanks all
I tried ringing but got the 'lines too busy to accept your call' message.

Will keep trying.

There are 6 of us on the booking which is the additional complication - I'm sure if they split us up we could fit in the remaining spare seats for other trains.

The phrase 'comparable conditions' in the Passenger Rights Regulations is intended to be read as 'class of travel', so it's only economy seats that they need to provide. However, it has sometimes known that they will upgrade in such situations so, yes, try calling them and see.

Travel with Eurostar is never easy these days: they often charge premium fares (having killed off much of the air traffic) but offer a rather basic level of customer service when/if things go wrong....

There are still plenty of tickets available on Eurostar from Lille to London. I presume that a change at Lille would be seen as a reasonable rerouting.

I'm on hold to them now so I will suggest this. If they deny, do I have grounds to book that and claim back? Or would they say that the 9pm option they provided was sufficient? Feels a bit of a grey area.

Gerald Fiennes said:

The phrase 'comparable conditions' in the Passenger Rights Regulations is intended to be read as 'class of travel',

Click to expand...

Is that documented somewhere?
The current Regulation says in article 18(2):

Where, for the purposes of points (b) and (c) of paragraph 1, comparable re-routing is operated by the same railway undertaking or another undertaking is commissioned to perform the re-routing, this shall not generate additional costs to the passenger. This requirement also applies where the re-routing involves the use of transport of a higher service class and alternative modes of transport. Railway undertakings shall make reasonable efforts to avoid additional connections and to ensure that delay in the total travel time is as short as possible. Passengers shall not be downgraded to transport facilities of a lower class unless such facilities are the only re-routing means available.

Click to expand...

"Comparable transport conditions" is also the same phrase as used in the previous Regulation, for which the European Commission issued "Interpretative guidelines", that stated a bit more clearly in section 4.2.3 on the concept of ‘comparable transport conditions’ in cases where a journey is continued or re-routed:

where passengers can only be re-routed on another rail carrier or on a transport mode of a higher class or with a higher fare than paid for the original service, re-routing shall be offered without additional costs for the passenger;

Click to expand...

As an update, I finally managed to get through on the phone.
To be fair, the agent was very helpful and managed to book us in Premier on the 15.12, for no additional cost. We were happy with this so accepted. She actually said that their policy now includes rebooking for free in a higher travel class in the event of disruption.

I did mention rerouting via Lille but she said her system couldn't do that... I didn't press on the matter given I was happy with the 15.12 option.

I do think it's bad that many people would not bother to phone up and would probably end up out of pocket not realising their rights.

otter11 said:

I do think it's bad that many people would not bother to phone up and would probably end up out of pocket not realising their rights.

Click to expand...

Exactly, and they don't realise because Eurostar fail to mention the full range of options they have to offer in their cancellation notices, which is also a breach of Regulation 2021/782.

My experience with E* is that they play pretty fast and loose with passenger rights as regards cancellations, but conversely, if you miss your train, they are usually quite good at squeezing you onto the next train, even if it means sitting on the corridor jump seats. There was a thread recently where someone was complaining their train had been cancelled, they had been directed to the portal to rebook and expected to pay the upgrade to E* Plus as these were the only seats available. This seems to indicate human intervention and interaction seems the order of the day

When Eurostar cancelled all its trains to and from Paris last year due to an unexploded WW2 bomb being found next to the lines out of Gare du Nord, I wanted to get back from Paris that day. Their website and app were in meltdown, let alone trying to speak to someone, so I just went by bus from Paris to Lille and got a Eurostar from there at an extortionate cost. To be fair to Eurostar on this occasion, when they must have been very busy, they contacted me spontaneously within a day of me getting back and refunded all my expenses within a couple of days of that.

rvdborgt said:

Exactly, and they don't realise because Eurostar fail to mention the full range of options they have to offer in their cancellation notices, which is also a breach of Regulation 2021/782.

Click to expand...

I suppose though it means more chance of those who do phone them up actually getting a seat on another service...