Eurostar compensation free return journey

dominoman

I was caught up in the Eurostar channel tunnel fire last month. When I arrived at the station in France I found out all the trains were cancelled until the morning.

Eurostar put us up overnight and the next morning I took the first train back to London.

According the man at the station we were told we could get 50% of our ticket price back, plus a free return journey. Seems very generous, but according to the site it is so: http://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/travel-information/service-information/disruption-compensation/exchanges-refunds-and-compensation

However, now I have tried to claim it and Eurostar say no. Their exact response was "[FONT=&quot]Unfortunately, our delay policy doesn't include the overall delay time of the passenger and only deals with the delay time from the departure to the arrival time of the train. "

Reading the link again it doesn't say that. Surely the train is considered delayed if it was cancelled and we couldnt get home till the next day?
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dominoman

Eurostar again today replied that "[FONT=&quot]the delay compensation is between the departure and the arrival, and does not account for the interim period between your original train and your rescheduled departure time. The period of delay is dependent solely on the time spent on board the train".

Surely that is nonsense. It wasn't me that cancelled the train. My arrival time was 18 hours late, but they are claiming that the delay only starts when I board the train.
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agrinnall

You're certainly right that it doesn't say it on the page you give the link to. You might need to delve deeper into the Conditions of carriage to see if it's specified there, but I think you could argue that such an important condition should be made plain. Quite how you will get Eurostar to agree with you I don't know, are they covered by Passenger Focus or not?