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October 7th 2008
Published: October 7th 2008
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Ken thinks it's exciting, but I think it is stressful. I went on Eurostar's website yesterday to confirm our train from London to Paris. When I clicked the link, I received the following message: 'This journey has been cancelled offline'. What does that mean? I couldn't find any more information from the website. Since I booked it through 'Eurostar' and not a third party, I could only deal with them and I could not find a phone number. I emailed them and this is the response I received:

Thank you for contacting Eurostar. Due to the high volume of e-mails received following the recent fire in the channel tunnel, our normal response time has been affected. We will endeavor to respond to all e-mails as soon as possible. If your e-mail is concerning a Eurostar journey that you were unable to make due to the fire, we will process any refund due and confirm by return e-mail. All travelers with non-essential journeys up to 30th of September can get a refund or exchange their tickets for travel at a later date. We would ask you not to contact us via telephone unless absolutely necessary during this period. Thank you for your patience and understanding during this busy time, please allow 14 days for all transactions.

FIRE, WHAT FIRE? PLEASE DON'T CONTACT THEM! I tried to search their website for more info and the website went down! It said it was conducting maintenance. I did a search on Google and found out on September 11th there was a fire in the tunnel. This was the report: The French Interior Ministry was reported as saying that the vehicle was carrying phenol, a toxic, flammable product.
How did the vehicle GET the phenol? That was as much information as I could find other than the fact that travel through the tunnel is chaotic at best. Many schedules cancelled or changed. Long lines to wait for rescheduling, PLUS a strike by some Belgium workers have made schedules even worse. Now what?
I decided to email them and ask for a refund. When we land in London, we have 3 1/2 hours to get through customs and take a train to St Pancras station to get our train to Paris, which has been cancelled. The thought of getting to the station and getting in line to try to get a trip to Paris after traveling all night was too much for me. I emailed Eurostar last night and received a response this morning. They will refund our tickets!! Now-how to get to Paris.
I quickly bought 2 tickets from Heathrow to Paris on British Airways for less money than I spent on the train tickets! We were looking forward going through the tunnel but now I can relax! We will just have to do it another time. You know, before I began planning this journey, I had read 'nightmarish' stories about train travel in Europe-meaning many cancellation, delays and strikes.

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