On Jan 10, 5:18*pm, wrote:
It's my birthday soon and because I have the time available next week
I decided that I'd treat myself to a day trip to continental Europe on
Wednesday 18th - I would plan on a basis of purely seeing *how far I
could travel in a day before having to turn back towards home. London
- Marseille and return is just achievable within a day. Considering
that I've never been south of Paris on a TGV, a jaunt across LGV-SE
and LGV-Med all the way to Marseille would be new ground.

I logged on to the Eurostar website to see what fares are available.
£58 each way. Considering I'm booking just a week ahead that is a
respectable deal. I'll have it.

(N.B I'm under 25 so entitled to youth fares)
http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z392/m82d1/1w.jpg

£58 outward on 05:40 London - Paris then 10:19 Paris - Marseille.
http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z392/m82d1/2w.jpg

£58 return on 14:14 Marseille - Lille Europe then on 20:30 Lille
Europe - London.
http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z392/m82d1/3w.jpg

Therefore the price should be £116 but at the payment page it's now
randomly inflated to £252 for no apparent reason! WTF!? :-?:-?:-?
http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z392/m82d1/5w.jpg

I telephoned Eurostar and spoke to a very nice lady who tried to book
my itinerary over the phone, once again the grand total was £252
despite being quoted £58 each way. The booking clerk was also none the
wiser as to why two £58 tickets have inflated from £116 to
£252... *:roll:

Plan B, I'll try Rail Europe. No tickets despite I've just found them
on Eurostar. :roll:http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z392/m82d1/6w.jpg

Plan C, I'll try Voyages SNCF. All goes well until the booking page
when I am introduced to an “erreur technique“.http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z392/m82d1/7w.jpg

Looks like I won't be going to Marseille, then.

As the saying goes, we can put man on the moon... :roll:


I've never come across anything like this before when trying to book a
through Eurostar+TGV ticket.

My guess as to what's going on here - and it is just a guess - is that
the booking system can't handle the concept that you only want to
spend 49 minutes in Marseille before returning.

If you look at Adult priced tickets for the same journey as the OP
describes then the same thing occurs, however if you look at Adult
priced tickets (though not Youth tickets - because allocation on the
return journey shows as sold out) for a slightly longer stay in
Marseille of 1 hour 11 mins (i.e. arriving at 13:25 as above, but
departing later at 14:36) then you don't encounter the same problem.

The issue with this however is that the return journey is from a more
expensive fare bucket, so the total fare becomes GBP149.00.

Also, it's worth noting that Youth and Senior fares now only offer a
5% discount on the cheapest Adult fare (in fare category BX) - I think
if they show as "sold out" that means that the BX fare category
(whether Adult or Youth/Senior discounted) has sold out altogether -
point being, if you get stuck looking for Youth/Senior fares, just
look for regular Adult fares instead (and accept that the cheapest
fares have sold-out)

More from the eurostar4agents site he
http://www.eurostar4agents.com/toolb...erange_24may11