When you phone 'Eurostar' to ask about fares, why are the prices always different than the prices on the..

Question

website. For example, I want to go with my daughter who is fifteen, to Paris from the 21st or 22nd of December to the 1st of January, from London Pancreas International. When I phoned up Eurostar this morning a woman quoted it would be around £220 which is ridiculous, but then she said it depended on what time of the day the train left London etc. But on the Eurostar website if you click on the 'fares', it says clearly that it costs £59 for a non exchangeable, non-flexible adult ticket RETURN. And then it also says it costs from £49 for a RETURN youth ticket. This price is far different from the price that a Eurostar employee said this morning. Then I went to see the fares by clicking the 'Book Online' link on the website. That quoted something else, £228. I'm sure if I went to my local train station and asked about a Eurostar ticket there, the price would then be completely different. Why are the prices all so different?

Answer 1

Eurostar prefer it if you book through their internet site (its cheaper and automated) and in effect give you a discount. If you book via the phone you have to speak to a human and you pay the full price.
The only place you can get Eurostar tickets is at London Waterloo (till Novemeber) London St Pancras (from Novemeber), Ashford, Ebbsfleet and on the Internet and Telephone.
The more flexible you want to be with tickets, the more they charge you for the ticket.

Restricted Ticket - Costs Less
Flexible Ticket - Costs more.

Certain trains only have limited numbers of cheap tickets, they call this quota controlling. Once the cheap restricted tickets have been sold at one level they go up to the next price band and so on.

Youth tickets are again another type of ticket, same thing applies to them.

Answer 2

Eurostar tickets can only be purchased in limited places, most railway stations have no access to there tickets as they are not a member of ATOC (associated train operating companies). The price variance could be down to the fact that the Internet system had not been updated or there was some Internet Only tickets availiable, dont forget on Internet based Travel Tickets, there is normally a handling, postage and payment charge for the tickets on top of the price advertised that would not be on the Eurostar brought tickets.
Also tickets brought via the Internet as you have already pointed out have greater restrictions, you MUST be on the train specified so if you are late the ticket is NON refundable or transferable unless you have a real good excuse and unfortunatley Eurostar do not accept the reason another Train operating Companies train was late, etc.

Answer 3

£59 appears to be a one way price only. I've checked the Eurostar website for the dates you give and this is what it says:- Fri 21st Dec 2007 plus/minus 3 days:


Total Outward price from £59.00 2 Adults

So you have at least to double this for the return. Then you have to allow for the fact that you want to return on New Year's Day when only premium fares may be available.

But your query is not one that is peculiar to Eurostar. There are regular press reports about the wildly differing fares that are offered for the same journey. Which has recently done a report on the subject, as someone has reminded us on the board only today. It's all the fault of the crazy rail system in this country.

Answer 4

It applys to airlines aswell, if you book through the call centre it costs more then if you booked online.

Eurostar thinks of itself more as an Airline then a Rail service.

What was the £220 ticket? Fully Flexible?

Answer 5

These will be value advance tickets, you are prolly booking them really close, if you tried a bit further into the future the price will come down, or try the none rush hour train, should lower the price.