Eurostar, any bargains?

Voyager2002

Random wrote: »

I'm wondering if the system change was that they now only allow booking a certain time in advance? If I look for 1st May, it says there are no trains, but for 1st April I can book. Prices were more expensive than Deutsche Bahn, but that may be the random days I picked if you saw some 39 euro ones, which is what I was trying to book.

Trouble is, I can't book the other tickets till I get this one, in case I have to cancel.

It just offered me one-way tickets for 1st May, Stuttgart-Paris at 47.50 euro on the 12.54 departure.

Are you trying to book a night-time sleeper? Perhaps the reservation system for these is different.

Voyager2002

Voyager2002 wrote: »

It just offered me one-way tickets for 1st May, Stuttgart-Paris at 47.50 euro on the 12.54 departure.

That was using the French-language version of the site. When I asked for it in English, and was kindly redirected to the site that serves the UK, the price was converted for my convenience, and was now just 76 pounds! Worth every penny for avoiding the bother of having to understand the value of a euro.

Seriously, why doesn't the EU do something about this kind of rip-off?

Random

Sorry yes, I should have said it was the sleeper in the last post, I did witter vaguely about it above somewhere

My goodness, 47.50 euros is £76 eh?

Apparently the UK bit is provided by Raileurope. Sometimes it sends me to a Raileurope page though, and other times to a different page. Sometimes it starts off English and then turns French randomly. And I thought the German site was bad!

shadyv

Voyager2002 wrote: »

That was using the French-language version of the site. When I asked for it in English, and was kindly redirected to the site that serves the UK, the price was converted for my convenience, and was now just 76 pounds! Worth every penny for avoiding the bother of having to understand the value of a euro.

Seriously, why doesn't the EU do something about this kind of rip-off?

Unfortunately? this didn't work for me. I'm thinking of going to Paris from Ashford in a couple of weeks and tried doing it from the French version but after converting Euros to GBP it actually costs about £25 more than booking from the English version..........

BernadetteN

I would bet that it is currently cheaper to use the UK website to buy Eurostar tickets, if you are in the UK and your money is in sterling.

I have recently bought 6 return tickets to Brussels and they have all worked out cheaper paying in sterling then Euros or any other currency. The cheapest return in sterling is currently £54, against €80 if you try to buy the same ticket. Even the staff discount tickets sold to staff at Paris and Brussels are €70 return which is still slightly more expensive than a £54 ticket. It's all due to the poor exchange rates against sterling at the moment - fare prices were set before the recent sterling slump.

Random

I still haven't been able to book the train I want, the French site doesn't even show it existing after the 13th April! I don't know whether to keep hanging on waiting, I'm really annoyed about it all. I really wanted to take the train, but now I've paid for one lot of Eurostar, I can't afford to pay out for another, and will probably have to fly if I can afford to go at all.

Anyone know what chance I might have trying to cancel the Eurostar? When I changed the time of the return, they made it clear that they couldn't do any more changes for me.