Wednesday, March 04, 2015

Chaos at the Calais end of Eurotunnel on 22 Feb 2015

See details of 'interesting' Eurotunnel experience below for your 'entertainment'.

Not least in view of the acknowledgement that "at times it was difficult for you to obtain clear information from either our teams on duty, or our Terminal Customer Information Screens" (difficult indeed, at least for the first 3 hours or so...), I don't intend to make 'further fuss' on this occasion...

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My message to Eurotunnel of 25 Feb 2015:
 
Dear Sir/Madam
No doubt you are aware that there was 'chaos' at Eurotunnel in Calais on Sunday evening, with the result that my return journey was delayed by no less than 6 hours overall. Obviously, the situation resulted in considerable inconvenience.

I was advised to write to customer.relations@eurotunnel.com regarding adequate compensation.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

Herbert Eppel

www.HETranslations.uk
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Automated reply from Eurotunnel:

Dear Customer,
Thank you for contacting the Customer Relations team at Eurotunnel Le Shuttle.
We are always keen to receive the views of our customers, and the feedback we receive is important to help us improve our service to you.
All emails are responded to individually by a member of our team and it is helpful for them to have all relevant information in order to respond to you in full. If you have not included your booking reference number or, where applicable, your Frequent Traveller account number, please re-send your message with this information included. Please also be aware that we can only correspond with the named ticket holder.
Our aim is to send you a response within 28 working days. However, we have recently received a high volume of emails and this is preventing us from replying to emails as quickly as we would like. Please be assured that we will be in touch as soon as possible.
If you have already sent an email and received an automatic acknowledgement to your message, you will receive a response from us in due course.
For your reference, emails sent to this address are managed between 09.00 and 17.30, Monday to Friday (except Bank Holidays).
Kind regards
Eurotunnel Le Shuttle Customer Relations

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Further reply from Eurotunnel of 4 March 2015:

Thank you for your email.

Firstly, please allow me to express how sorry I am to hear that you were affected by the delays to our Calais to Folkestone service when you travelled with us on the 22nd February; I am aware how inconvenient this delay would have been and how frustrating this is when you have made plans to travel at a specific time, only to face such a delay.

Under the circumstances, it does not seem fair that you should pay for this journey and I have arranged for a refund of the affected leg to be made to the card used for payment; this will appear back on your account within fourteen working days.

I am aware that due to the technical system failure we had experienced, at times it was difficult for you to obtain clear information from either our teams on duty, or our Terminal Customer Information Screens. An internal investigation is currently underway to establish the exact cause for this failure, and I would once again like to express my sincere apologies for the disruption you and your party faced. The system failure, together with the additional challenge of many customers arriving late due to the severe problems on the French motorways, meant that we faced an extremely challenging situation throughout Sunday evening and into the early hours of Monday morning.

Due to the number of contacts we have received, in order to ensure a prompt response to all customers, we are unable to comment specifically on all of the points you have raised in your e-mail; please rest assured however that your feedback will be used in our internal investigation.

I very much hope that when you next travel with Eurotunnel le Shuttle, our service lives up to the high standards you are entitled to expect from our service.

Kind regards,

Yves Szrama
Customer Experience Director
customer.relations@eurotunnel.com