Below is the letter I sent to Eurostar some weeks ago. I have
had no response from it.
8/1/03
Dear Customer Services,
Once again, I find myself at the mercy of Eurostar's chronic disorganisation
and abysmal communication skills. The first incident is
relatively minor. I was picking my mother up from Ashford
station on December 16th last year. Her train was due at 14.08,
but seeing as it was a round trip of about an hour, I tried to
ascertain whether or not her train was on time. The woman at the
Eurostar information line was friendly, but admitted the computers
weren't very accurate. As far as she knew, there were no problems,
but perhaps I should call later nearer the time. She also suggested
I call the station. This is, of course, impossible to do now.
Heaven forbid, a passenger might wish to call a station. The woman
at Connex said they don't release numbers for security purposes.
Is someone really going to blow up a station over the phone..?
I digress. The next time I called, at just before one, when the
train would already have left Paris, I was blithely assured it
was on time. It wasn't, of course. It was nearly an hour late.
I would have thought this information would have been quite readily
available the second time I'd called.
The second incident concerned myself, travelling
from Paris to London on Sunday (5th Jan). I was
booked on the 17.43 train. I arrived an hour before that, knowing
your check-in procedure to be somewhat haphazard, to find the
station in complete bedlam. An enormous crowd was assembled on
the concourse, held back by two bouncers to prevent anyone from
checking in. It transpired that because of 'technical faults and
weather conditions' trains were running late or were cancelled.
Beyond that, no actual information was being given. No-one dared
leave the crowd, for fear that a train might go, leaving them
stranded. As mine was one of the services cancelled, I especially
didn't want to go anywhere. I was supposedly being allocated on
one of the other trains, but so were several hundred other people.
A spectacularly unhelpful announcement declared that 'if it
were not absolutely necessary to travel, could we come back another
day and of course, our tickets would be exchanged, free of charge.'
Free of charge, when we've been treated like a herd on the way
to slaughter! You were lucky you didn't have a mass riot on your
hands. The atmosphere in the crowd was not particularly friendly,
seeing as the majority were British people returning home, where
were they supposed to go? For three hours, we stood in the freezing
cold, shuffling closer to the train, everyone defending their
spot to the death.
There were no staff whatsoever at Waterloo, not even at passport
control. No doubt they were hiding. They didn't want to face an
angry mob arriving in London at past eleven on a Sunday night.
We could have bringing in swathes of illegal immigrants for all
they cared.
In the olden days, staff were there to allocate vouchers for a
free journey in the future. I expect if they'd been there to do
that then, you'd have gone broke.
I understand that weather is going to disrupt services, but it
is the way you treat your customers that is so appalling. Why
is there not a number to phone to find out about delays? Why are
you incapable of sorting out your check-in so that separate queues
relate to separate trains, instead of having a mad scramble to
get on trains. Why are you not able to provide better information?
Why do you have the gall to charge such extortionate prices for
such a shoddy service? With the low cost airlines bringing out
more and more cheap flights, you'll really feel the pinch before
long. We don't need another line at Kings Cross. What we want
are cheaper trains that run on time. By the time you've finished
mucking about at Kings Cross, you'll have no customers left.
I'll be sending this letter to a couple of websites where it will
be posted online for all to see.
