Sorry to hear that, all seemed ok at Brussels at 5pm when I caught the Amsterdam to London service.
Mrs S was told to go away and find her own hotel. Fortunately I found her something in Booking.com which she is now in, but says it's like the Bates' Motel. She's less than impressed; no doubt it'll be back to BA or Easyjet for her next trip to the Netherlands.
Thanks for the piece - at least I know what's happening.
In general Dutch stations have not that many staff and I've seen many cases where they just can't handle stranded passengers. Domestic passengers are often enough told to get a taxi themselves and then are angry when customer service tells them later that self-arranged taxis are not refunded for example.
Yes, the discussions did seem to be getting quite heated this evening from what I could hear on the phone...
NSI are supposed to have agreements with hotels that they can book, and are also supposed to have leaflets with a URL that can be handed out to stranded passengers so they can use to book themselves with the agreed hotels. Apparently this didn't work like that here. Or maybe that's because it's Eurostar and not NSI who decided that they didn't need to help their stranded passengers.
I read the train was eventually evacuated around 21.30. An NS spokesperson told nu.nl that it wasn't clear what was wrong with the train: the driver had been able to restart it and drive a bit further several times before it broke down completely.
Apparently some people without the means to fork out for a hotel spent the night at Rotterdam Centraal.
This must work, Eurostar are obliged to organise all of this free of charge. If Eurostar refuse to reimburse the extra expenses (assuming she booked there), then open a case with London TravelWatch.
That's of course a breach of EU Regulation 2021/782. People should complain to Eurostar and (if needed) London TravelWatch.
Is this within London TravelWatch jurisdiction?
Eurostar is in their jurisdiction. If this problem is not in their jurisdiction, they'll let you know.
NS is the carrier in the Netherlands, so they're responsible on the spot, although I assume there's also Eurostar staff on the ground, but NS and Eurostar will have agreed how they handle stranded passengers. Any complaints after the journey are however normally dealt with the place where you bought your ticket.
I don't think London TravelWatch is likely to care about EU legislation breaches.
Nope, that's not right. They are required to let you travel without extra costs (so they MUST refund the extra ticket) and compensation for delay is on top of that.
A further twist. Although Eurostar said they were only going to refund us €92. they have actually paid a sum of £172.95 into my bank account. This is rather more than what they said they would pay, but still is less than half our out-of-pocket expenses. No explanation of what costs it is intended to cover.
Strange things. Do keep us informed!
It all got very confused. It transpired that Eurostar had refunded some further money to my wife's bank account, which I wasn't aware of at the time, so I think she got most, but not all, of her out-of-pocket expenses back. I decided it wasn't worth pursuing them for a few tens of pounds.
Thanks. So the only question that remains is why they fobbed all passengers off the night of the event to find their own solutions.
From what I was told, there were only one or two Eurostar members of staff on duty at Rotterdam who said that they didn't have authority to arrange hotels, alternative travel etc. It could be lack of training - are they even full time Eurostar staff, or just seconded from NS?
Could be just NS - NS (and not Eurostar) are the operator in the Netherlands, so they also have some responsibilities, although it's a matter of what NS and Eurostar have agreed on who does what in practice. In any case, for whatever reason, it looks like nobody was able to assist the stranded passengers, which remains strange since they had a few hours to organise this. And there should in fact always be someone who knows what needs to be done, if only to distribute leaflets with the relevant information.
