Arriving at Gare du Nord, my wife and I checked in as normal and not being medically qualified, did not take too much notice of an announcement asking if there was a Doctor amongst the passengers in the boarding lounge. Until both the 14:53 and our own train, the 15:13 departures were listed as delayed until 16:00. Reason being a passenger had fallen between the train and the platform on the incoming service (presumably taking both sides of the double platform out of service though that was never made clear. Now, we had a connection to make at Kings Cross, and because our Kings Cross to Morpeth tickets had been booked with the last of our East Coast Profiles points, they were not booked as through tickets from Paris and I realised that if the delay crept up any further we’d be in serious trouble. So I politely asked several members of staff both for further information and if they could transfer us on to the earlier train. We got a succession of “Non”, to both requests. Until one person happily took our tickets, consulted a chart of seat availability (or so we thought) then returned our tickets with a sticker attached giving seat numbers on the earlier train as requested. “Why couldn’t any of the other staff members do that?” I thought. “It can’t be too difficult”. But perhaps it is, because no sooner had we sat down on our new seats, an Australian couple turned up with tickets for exactly the same seats. Happily, there was still spare capacity on the coach and the Australians readily agreed to move to the next carriage. But I really think Eurostar need to improve both information and assistance to customers during disruption incidents, and their general customer service.
