Class combinations on Eurostar/UK

[johnnychips]

My friend was extremely jealous that our colleague had somehow wangled first class tickets on the Donny-Kings Cross leg of a journey to Brussels and vv, while we festered in second, but we never asked him if he'd travelled First, or Advanced Standard (or whatever it's called ) on the Eurostar, or in fact been in Standard on a different bit of the train.

So:

- can you book First Class on the UK leg of the journey and Standard on the Eurostar (and indeed vv)?

- Do Eurostar pay the same price for an advance ticket from somewhere in the UK to London as we do, or do they get a discount?

(I do realise if we bought separate UK and E* tickets, we'd lose the protection of getting a later train free if our first were delayed)

Just wondered!

 

[AlexNL]

If your friend traveled in Standard Premier on the Eurostar, he had an 1st class ticket for his entire journey.

Eurostar allows you to buy a through ticket of which the domestic leg is in First Class, and the international leg in Standard. As soon as you search for a ticket on Eurostar.com and select a train, you get a popup asking you what kind of ticket you want for the domestic leg of the journey. You can select Advance or Anytime, and Standard or First.

And then it could still be that he decided to upgrade to First Class on the day of travel, and purchased an upgrade at Doncaster station.

 

[johnnychips]

Thanks Alex, that's interesting... of course the key question is if Head Office will reimburse his expenses! I remember once I managed to buy an Advance First Class UK ticket cheaper than a Standard, and the Belgian staff just did not see how this was possible - it took a lot of email exchanges to convince them.

 

[AlexNL]

I've seen it happen before that 2nd class was out of cheap fares, while there still were advance fares available for 1st class. Maybe he took a screenshot of the booking page when he bought his ticket, and is using that to support his expense report?