Eurostar cheap return - use one way?

bcl999

To buy a standard single ticket is going to cost me £149 but I could buy a cheap return for £59. Will they know I haven't used outward portion? Anyone know?

alanrowell

If they do, they don't care. Just buy the cheapest ticket even if it is a return

bcl999

I have actually solved it for myself. I visited the site again and found I can book Paris to London returns, not just London to Paris ones. So I can buy the ticket with an outward route of Paris to London (which will actually be my return route to London) and it won't matter if I don't use the second part of the ticket. It's even cheaper this way - £47 return!

alanrowell

Oops, misread your first posting - all of the cases I've heard of have dealt with not using the RETURN portion of your ticket because, as you've discovered, you can book in any direction.

As for prices on Eurostar, they are a law unto themselves.

I always check the prices in a number of different currencies & book whichever one comes out with the cheapest for my particular trip.

To do this requires you to clear out the Eurostar cookies from your browser, close the browser & go into the Eurostar website again & claim that you are in a different country (typically I use GBP/EUR/USD)

BernadetteN

bcl999 wrote:

I have actually solved it for myself. I visited the site again and found I can book Paris to London returns, not just London to Paris ones. So I can buy the ticket with an outward route of Paris to London (which will actually be my return route to London) and it won't matter if I don't use the second part of the ticket. It's even cheaper this way - £47 return!

I travel to work on Eurostar as operational staff so I don't normally have a ticket and am therefore no Eurostar ticket expert. However, I buy tickets on behalf of ny next door neighbour (who's old and hasn't got a computer) and one day at work asked the ticket staff at Ashford station what happens if you have a return ticket and use only the return portion (and not the outward portion) and was told this would invalidate the ticket. I have since bought my next door neighbour 2 return tickets to Brussels from Ashford and she has used only the outward portions without trouble.

You may find however that if you log on to the Eurostar website via a French search engine (deleting cookies which would send your computer to UK Eurostar website) and you price the same journey in Euros, it may be cheaper.