It also seems it's all the fault of the Dutch...
There's a hint in the Railway Gazette that the problem relates to a transition phase to a new retail system for Eurostar.
It doesn't sound like a permanent or policy issue.
https://www.railwaygazette.com/news...db-seek-to-solve-through-ticketing-issue.html
It also seems it's all the fault of the Dutch...
Just to confuse even further, the 2 ECs that run Switzerland-Hamburg don't seem to count.
Maybe. The EU (sorry, I know there is a thing called Brexit looming) is to decide about this-and hopefully to apply much more strict rules about this. Consumer/train-user associations are pressing for that. Also compensation for late arrivals is to be raised.
That's good to hear. It's surely in both their interests to get it sorted.
Berlin to St Pancras, 1st Class, is a journey I've done a few times. Last time I did it about 18 months ago I paid around €120. I've looked at Sunday 17 May and the 0605 departure is €230, consisting of a very reasonable €60.90 for Berlin to Brussels and €161.00 from Brussels to London.
No, I used the DB app.
Which I guess is the problem in all of this. Eurostar is expensive but they're still doing a good job filling the trains! Personally I'd say €161.00 for London to Berlin in 1st class whilst by no stretch of the imagination being cheap would not be unreasonable either. But when Eurostar can fill Standard Premier for €161.00 just on their own London to Brussels leg they have very little incentive to work with anyone else to bring in through fares for which they get a smaller piece of the pie. I fear that DB London Special tickets were a good offer which has sadly gone the way of all things. I would, personally, not be surprised if we never saw them come back. Only thing we might be able to hope for is better rights in the event of delays between DB/ES (i.e. if ES is late DB will allow later travel no quibble or vice versa).
Yes, that's correct, except it's in English on my app!
There must have been a commercial reason/incentive for making them available up until now though - I'd be interested what that was. Was it that Eurostar would sell off a block of cheap places to DB in advance, perhaps for a similar price as the lowest tier you can get on the E* website - and then DB use these to tempt people onto their more lightly loaded trains, by effectively making the DB portion of the journey very cheap? The DB through tickets mostly seemed to be available on the E* services that are the ones that are cheapest when you book them directly - it was more that there seemed to be an allocation remaining on the DB combined tickets after E*'s allocation of directly-purchased cheap tickets had sold out.
OK thanks. Last time I used that feature it was effectively an e-mail request, didn't realise things had changed
That must be fairly recent, because for a long time you could manipulate the stopover in Brussels to allow any ES at the same price, whereas you had to be careful with the DB leg(s).
