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Eurostar tickets - to and from any Belgian station
I am fighting a battle with Eurostar having bought tickets to and from Brussels International station to London St Pancras.
I actually wanted to use the ticket from my local station and tried to do this on their booking site. Impossible.
I tried calling their number and held for 15 mins without a reply. I tried their live chat. No response. I finally emailed and eventually had a response 5 days later. By this time I had bought my tickets but now have to pay the additional fare to and from Brussels International station.
I am pretty angry as this is advertised as an All in fare.
I want to warn other users of this
I also want to point out how inefficient their Customer service is It is very much take it or leave it.
When I eventually received a reply to my complaint they offered to change the ticket to include the additional travel but the fares had increased and to change the ticket you pay a €30 penalty.
Beware!
If your local station is within the Brussels area, then a Brussels-London ticket covers your travel automatically.
If you are travelling from any other Belgian station (Called All-Belgian station ticket) then the fare is slightly higher.
I suspect the charge that you incurred reflects that supplement. That is legitimate pricing policy and can be viewed here:
http://www.eurostar.com/be-en/travel-info/travel-planning/eurostar-fares...
All-in fare doesn't mean there's not a supplement included in the actual fare you pay.
I don't think you can purchase one of those All-in fares through the Eurostar website as it only includes Eurostar trains. This website offers tickets from any train station in Belgium to London etc.
https://www.b-europe.com/
All Belgian Station tickets can indeed be purchase via https://www.eurostar.com
Just set Ghent or Brugge as your start/destination and it will provide you with the All-Belgian station fare which you can then use for any destination in Belgian (excluding Thalys/ICE trains).
It's pretty crap design and usability that the Eurostar site seems to accept only Ghent or Bruges as "Any Belgian Station". I tried with a dozen Belgian stations and it did not recognize any of them. How is the user supposed to know this?? If you live in Antwerp, of course you will try Antwerp or Anvers and when you receive the error message that the place is not recognized, it's understandable to think that it does not work. Maybe there should be a warning on this page http://www.eurostar.com/be-en/travel-info/your-trip/onward-connection/co... that only Bruges and Ghent are recognized by the site as being Belgian stations.
Rather than moaning on some thread read by a few take to twitter and additionally take time to write a LETTER to ths chief executive officer in person that usually works to get issues resolved in my experience don't just put up with poor service and then moan if customer service is bad they need to know
The irony is that "any Belgian station" IS recognised (as either point of origin or of destination) on the English language version of the Eurostar website. Definitely poor website design.
Another interesting point is that the page which is supposed to give the range of Eurostar prices appears to charge less for a ticket to/from ABS than for a comparable ticket to/from just Bruxelles, and that is NEVER true, the ABS price is ALWAYS higher although by how much no longer appears to a constant amount. It is true that for stations relatively close to Bruxelles, the ABS fare is usually higher than the Eurostar Bruxelles fare plus the fare for a SNCB/NMBS ticket purchased separately.
It is usually cheaper to buy the Belgian stations ticket separately to the Eurostar St Pancras-Midi ticket so your difficulty buying the "any Belgian station" might be an economic bonus.
I book regularly, and have always used this page where "Any Belgian Station" is certainly an option.
However, agree with Shortof above, it is often much cheaper to buy the tickets separately.
If you're having trouble buying online, your best bet would be to go to the ticket office at your local station and buy the ticket there.
