BahrainLad

Quite. Clearly CIHY has never been on Eurostar. It can be a scrum even in BP!

callum9999

As they should do. People who block empty seats on crowded trains and buses are rather selfish and get on my nerves.

Yes people can "climb over" the person sitting in the aisle - but as you've observed, people generally don't like to do that.

hugolover

I think the real incident is that you paid for Standard Premier...even CE puts it to shame.

h15t0r1an

I too was trying to work out exactly how I could say the same thing politely...

I'm with the OP. Have encountered this attitude occasionally without provocation before and it always leads to me not using that particular service again for extremely long times and even selecting other much more inconvenient services.

Vinotraveller

You can change your allocated carriage and seat during the booking process on the Eurostar website. That is the simplest way to ensure that you are sitting where you want to.

SCSA

Eurostar website seat allocation process wouldn't let me change seats or even show a seat map.

I think I still feel a little stung by the whole thing because I've been on flights where people did everything but stomp and scream over their seat assignments. I once flew Y on United long-haul, and a last minute equipment change screwed everyone up. Many families were forced to split up, though children were never left unattended.

One man screamed "I don't care about other families. Just my own". And of course he got his way, having a passenger involuntarily moved from a bulkhead so he could join his wife and two children.

If an airplane tells you can't move there's usually a good reason - one is that people are charged extra for the exit row and the other is balance in light loads.

The accusations that I was aggressive or wouldn't have voluntarily removed myself at Lille are reflective of the customer service attitude sometimes seen in this part of the world: The customer is not someone who spent money to be there. The customer is an enemy who is probably going to make your life difficult.

SCSA

I dunno. i don't like to climb over, but I don't like to stand for an hour either. I would just ask the person to let me in (requiring them to stand up for a second).

Yahillwe

I've changed seats at times, when the train was't full. When full, I usually sit in the hallway, have no problem with that. The ladies/gents have always been courteous to me even serving me my food there, and few times they put me in their private cabins.

Guess sometimes one gets someone who was in a foul mood.

Sorry about that OP.

bioblot

No one climbs over on trains do they? I always prefer an aisle seat so sit in an aisle seat and people ask me if the window seat is free and I get up to let them in. I thought that was standard etiquette

orbitmic

On the first point, out of curiosity, did you book direct from Eurostar or through a third party provider? Sometimes if third party (e.g. SNCB) you can't change seats on the Eurostar website, but they will always do it at the station if there are seats available.

Otherwise, the only times I have not been able to access seat maps was indeed when the train was fully booked in my class which happens frequently especially on SP at peak morning/evening times. I suspect this is what happened here as the train manager sat you in a BP seat instead.

On the second point, I think that your experience was with remarkably tolerant crew (and I'm not sure that it is a good thing). I have seen many instances when passengers were refused to change seats firmly and "finally", including on BA.

And again, on your third point, many of us thought that if what the crew member told you, she had a perfectly good reason not to want you to sit on that seat: the fact that it was booked by someone else who would board a few minutes later when the train would arrive in Lille.

I haven't seen anyone accusing you of that, just people including myself saying that the staff members may have perceived it otherwise regarding the first element, and could not have been certain in the latter case. On the former case, I should stress again that this is not judgemental in any way, I have had occasions myself when my girlfriend thought I seemed to speak harshly to someone while I had thought and intended to be perfectly nice, and conversely, I have occasionally thought that friends or family sounded quite curt when speaking to someone just for them to be extremely surprised and shocked it came across that way. Tone is not an exact science by any standard.

Regardless of what you think of "that part of the world", as mentioned, the most aggressive tone I have seen used by crew towards passengers has been on US airlines such as AA and by quite a distance, and that is despite the US being a clearly service-oriented country.

I have personally never experienced a rude/unfair wagon manager on the Eurostar in hundreds of trips. I am not saying that they do not exist, I'm sure they do as in any other company and it is perfectly possible that you just got the unlucky pick on that day, but I find that any generalisation that Eurostar staff would be ruder/less accommodating than BA's or any other airline would simply be entirely unfounded in my experience.

SCSA

The attitude of traditional US carrier crew members is due largely to the historically dysfunctional relationships between management and staff. A passenger isn't just buying a plane ticket. He's buying a sideline seat to the Thirty Years War.

The cabin crew on Jet Blue and Southwest are examples of how happy employees result in happy passengers.

Yahillwe

Do I recall an incident of an FA being not happy at all with jet blue?

Doc Savage

^

SCSA

That was the Jet Blue flight attendant who lost it and slid down the emergency slide with a six pack of beer. He was upset with an out of control passenger.

SCSA

I freely admit I have high standards for service. Unlike a lot of posters on this board, I pay for all my business or personal travel out of my own pocket. Part of the exchange of money for travel is service, and the more something costs, the more demanding I am about service.