Journey from Frankfurt to Brussels with pass, cancelled train means having to pay to use Thalys to m

[BigCj34]

Try contacting the Eisenbahn-Bundesamt which is the German federal regulator responsible for rail transport. They've helped me before where I've had a claim denied due to the regulations being slightly unclear. You might get a response saying they're refunding you out of goodwill as they don't want any clarifying courtcases.

Grab the relevant form linked on this website and send off the complaint (e-mail works, too).

Very good shout. Shall have a look!

 

[reb0118]

A few years back I had a similar situation when travelling back from Lübeck to Edinburgh with my Mother. We were booked through with DB to Brüssel Süd, then Eurostar to London, & Caledonian Sleeper up the road. (I had built the time buffer in at London to get a meal at St. Pancras prior to wandering down to Euston.)

My Mother had a DB London Spezial and I was on FIP international coupons - neither of which are generally accepted on Thalys. However our DB IC service from Hamburgh was running late and we therefore missed our DB ICE connection at Köln for Brüssel.

The staff on the delayed train were helpful and informed us that we would be allowed on the next "Railteam" service to Brüssel - BUT that we were required to get our tickets stamped at the information counter at Köln. Which we duly did.

On board the Thalys we had no reservations, and because there are/were no indications of whether a seat is reserved or not we had to move once when the "official" holder of the seat arrived. The train manager when checking our tickets actually had no interest (or tbf was disinterested) in them. He, merely, wanted to see our original seat reservations with the railteam authorisation stamp.

Although not an official connection we managed to make our booked Eurostar where they managed to upgrade us to a table of four, much to the chagrin of a couple of squatters who subsequently required eviction, due to the fact that due to booking separately I was not seated with my Mother. (I didn't have the heart to inform the helpful Euroster lass at check in that that was deliberate).

So, to summarise, if you have a through booking with members of the Railteam "association" then the above mentioned HOTNAT principle should apply.

Good luck in your refund application.

 

[Capybara]

I got one from the DB ticket office by showing my reservation in Köln. Not sure what I would have got with just an interail and no reservation

Cheers. I guess I'll be sticking with my arrange-to-get-there-early approach.

 

[BigCj34]

I have another cunning plan here as the European rail bureaucrats have mysteriously vanished, which is raising the issue with my credit card company? After all, the service that I paid for with my ticket was not delivered to expectation (ie. not being able to complete a planned journey with my pass). Wonder if anyone has had much success taking that road. I know there was a chap who claimed back with his credit card with his Southern season ticket.

 

[thaitransit]

This is a lesson in not booking tight connections. The old rules of allow 2 hours between long distance trains and 1 hour for any local trains. Should avoid most of the problems. If its a once or twice daily service you allow at least 3 hours incase of major delays.

I have seen long distance trains before arrive 3 to 4 hours late. Once I saw one that was actually 36 hours down on a route that was only 27 hours long. You would have missed even overnight stop connections with that delay.

 

[BigCj34]

It was certainly ambitious, there was plenty of time for delays in Frankfurt and Brussels, but not for cancellations! Did only just make the train in Vienna though. But in future it is either do what you said, have good travel insurance or fly! I'm not going to lose too much sleep over the £60, as annoying as it was, but it is a matter of principle. Same with my issue with LNER in another thread, I didn't desperately need £6.80 but it sets a precedent for future travellers. If we want to promote greene rail travel over the alternatives then people shouldn't be penalised for having the absolute cheek to use the train.

 

[Bletchleyite]

This is a lesson in not booking tight connections. The old rules of allow 2 hours between long distance trains and 1 hour for any local trains. Should avoid most of the problems. If its a once or twice daily service you allow at least 3 hours incase of major delays.

I have seen long distance trains before arrive 3 to 4 hours late. Once I saw one that was actually 36 hours down on a route that was only 27 hours long. You would have missed even overnight stop connections with that delay.

What "old rules" are those? They have never applied in Europe.

 

[thaitransit]

In Australia and much of Asia it is considered too risky to book under 1 hour connections between long distance trains as 1 hour plus delays are common at anytime of the year. Infact nsw trainlink wont let you do it unless its considered a guaranteed connection where the connecting train will be delayed to await connecting passengers sometimes by upto an hour!

 

[BigCj34]

Got a letter from Thalys claiming my journey was not eligible for HOTNAT, as follows:

I understand this situation must have been very unpleasant for you and that this journey must have been very tiring. Unfortunately, the HOTNAT procedure does not apply to the specific situation you found yourself in on 27/08/2018.

Please allow me to explain the HOTNAT procedure. This procedure is valid on the Railteam Network (only for a connection between certain trains, most exclusively high-speed) for the second part of the journey. If the passenger misses his or her train because of a delay or cancellation of the first train, a HOTNAT sticker will be given for the next train that will go from the transfer station to the final station (without transferring).

Moreover, a Railteam stamp for Thalys can only be given by the personnel of the Thalys Store & More in Cologne.

This means that, unfortunately, we cannot refund your Thalys ticket.

So, according to HOTNAT, I could only take the next direct service from Frankfurt to Brussels which was 2 hours later, and then be able to hop on the next Eurostar. Except that the next and last Eurostar of the day would have left 17 minutes after I arrived in Brussels; clearly not enough time to have the ticket validated, then go through security and two passport controls.

I shall see what my credit card company can do, plus the response from the German Federal railway regulator. I could write to my MEP, got until March for that!

 

[BigCj34]

After numerous letters to Deutsche Bahn, Thalys, Interrail, the German rail regulator, my credit card company and my European MEP, it appears I have finally received a refund of €70.50, comprising of the Thalys fee and the DB booking fee. Don't know which complaint triggered it but quite chuffed a resolution has been reached!

 

[Vectron]

Here's my Brussels farce from a few weeks ago. We were booked on the 14.37 Frankfurt-Brussels (ICE14) which was 'cancelled' and starting from Köln Hbf. Fortunately we were advised of this on our inbound ICE and told to stay on it until Köln Messe/Deutz. Although the ICE arrived on time it departed 14 minutes late due to “too many passengers” on the train.

The DB app was showing ICE14 departing 40 minutes late at 16.24 but there was no announcement on the train until Messe/Deutz (15.27, still 14 late) when we were just advised to catch the 15.35 which arrived at Hbf at the same time as an Aachen train on the adjacent platform so it took a few minutes to get off the platform and by the time we reached the platform an ICE was disappearing out of the station. I couldn’t find the re-timed ICE14 on the departure board and a visit to the Information Desk confirmed it had departed on time (15.44). I was told the ‘next train’ rule didn’t apply as we hadn’t been changing trains at Köln Hbf so it was off to the Thalys shop across the square. They confirmed the same thing and we had to pay €40 each.

An almost happy ending - we haven't got our money back yet but DB have asked for our bank account details so here's hoping.

DB can't even run the existing Brussels so how do they expect to operate two more services? Maybe admit defeat and just run a Brussels-Köln service.

 

[JonathanP]

It's pretty poor of DB to not hold the connection if passengers had been advised by the conductor to use it. In my experience they've usually been pretty good at that. Back in September they even held the München - Zagreb sleeper for 30 minutes for a late running ICE, to my surprise.

The two extra services are actually only 6 extra train pairs a week, 5 of which are the same train pair that already operates Fridays and Sundays, only one is a new path, on Sunday evenings, to Köln only. So it shouldn't be that much of a stretch.

 

[urpert]

The number of class 406 trains that can got to Belgium is relatively small. Over the last few weeks DB had to cancel several trains between Frankfurt and Cologne to have enough sets available to run the service to Brussels. Several trains set were out of service as the heat took its toll on them.

There are several changes in the signalling (KVB vs ETCS vs PZB/LZB) and electrial systems (AC vs DC) en route from Cologne to Brussels and sometimes things do not work out. Last year on a business trip to Brussels the ICE broke down after the DC-to-AC-change when we joined the high speed line. They managed to get the train up and running again and we crawled to Liège where we had to leave and continue our voyage using SNCB domestic trains (they accepted our German ICE ticket without any issues when we told them that our train broke down).

Additionally, there is usually no spare train in Brussels during the day: When the outbound train from Cologne has an issue this usually results in the cancellation of the return service, as there is no train to fill the void.



Unfortunately, HONAT is not an obligation or passenger right, but just a gentlemen agreement between the rail operators. I also heard somewhere that HONAT only covers delays but not cancellation (but I am not completely sure). Thalys is a bit special in terms of customer service: A few years back I heard an angry conversation between Thalys staff and a passenger, where they told him: "It was his decision to travel with them". Or an episode from Paris-North: A family with a stroller is running to the platform. When they are about 10m away Thalys staff roped off the platform and would not let them board.

In Germany, passenger rights would allow you to take another train than the one indicated on you ticket, when a train is cancelled or a delay of more then 20min is to expected at our final destination. You would not need a special endorsement to use another train. But this only covers trains that do not require a reservation. So for a Thalys your would need an endorsement as it requires a reservation.



In this case they would have be required to put you in a hotel. Sometimes vouchers are handed it out or you book a hotel on your own and put in a compensation form later on to get the hotel costs refunded. There is a maximum hotel refund limit (around 80€ I guess). Given that there is not much DB staff in Brussels you have to deal with the SNCB people.

For your Thalys Ticket you can try to get a refund by writing a nice letter to the Passenger Rights Office and State what happened (ICE xx to Brussels was cancelled, next ICE train would result in missed EST, Thalys required you to buy a new ticket), enclose the Thalys-Ticket. You will get an answer in a few weeks and maybe a refund. The address is:


I will be using the Brussels-ICE service (with EST-connections) next month. Let's see which surprises DB and EST (which is much worse than the DB in managing incidents when things go south) have in store

Cheers
Charly

I was just about to recommend writing to this address. I had a similar experience with that same ICE being cancelled and missing a E* connection (though I did have CIV tickets). I was refunded for a night in a hotel in Brussels and also received a proportion of my Wien-London fare back.

 

[in_luzern]

Ah, Thalys...

I got caught up in the aftermath of the ICE fire a couple of weeks ago when travelling from Basel to Ottignies in Belgium, a journey that I do about once a month. I missed my ICE connection to Liège in Köln of course, but was just in time for the Thalys that left an hour later. I showed the train manager my DB ticket and asked if I could board, to which he replied: "Yes, but you'll have to buy a new ticket". Not wanting to do this, I decided to follow the advice of the staff on the Basel-Köln train, which was to travel on to Aachen by RegioExpress "where an ICE to Liège and Brussels will be waiting". Except that the RE was 25 minutes late and the ICE had long since left Aachen by the time we arrived.

In the end, after another hour's wait at Aachen, I ended up having to buy a Thalys ticket from there to Liège anyway... and 33 euros for a 20-minute journey is a bit steep to say the least! I eventually arrived at Ottignies four hours late, having been only 80 minutes late at Köln.

My only gripe is with the Thalys staff who, in the exceptional circumstances, could perhaps have been a bit more accommodating with regard to DB tickets.

 

[BigCj34]

Ah, Thalys...

I got caught up in the aftermath of the ICE fire a couple of weeks ago when travelling from Basel to Ottignies in Belgium, a journey that I do about once a month. I missed my ICE connection to Liège in Köln of course, but was just in time for the Thalys that left an hour later. I showed the train manager my DB ticket and asked if I could board, to which he replied: "Yes, but you'll have to buy a new ticket". Not wanting to do this, I decided to follow the advice of the staff on the Basel-Köln train, which was to travel on to Aachen by RegioExpress "where an ICE to Liège and Brussels will be waiting". Except that the RE was 25 minutes late and the ICE had long since left Aachen by the time we arrived.

In the end, after another hour's wait at Aachen, I ended up having to buy a Thalys ticket from there to Liège anyway... and 33 euros for a 20-minute journey is a bit steep to say the least! I eventually arrived at Ottignies four hours late, having been only 80 minutes late at Köln.

My only gripe is with the Thalys staff who, in the exceptional circumstances, could perhaps have been a bit more accommodating with regard to DB tickets.

My letter to my MEP called for greater protection, in the context of Interrail pass holders anyway, so people using can use another train company in the event of a delay. HOTNAT is not fit for purpose, I couldn't use it for changes in Cologne, only in Brussels.

 

[Mag_seven]

It would be easier if Thalys was just cut back to start / terminate at Brussels with DB providing an hourly Brussels/Cologne ICE "shuttle".