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Eurostar Pricing Quirk

I wanted to pass along a quirk I just experienced while booking one way Eurostar tickets from London to Paris for July 2017. I had been researching times and prices on my smartphone while laying in bed last night, and I noticed that the pricing was all in GBPs. No big deal, I'm handy with mental currency conversion so I was fine.

This morning I decided to go ahead and finalize my plans, and I logged into a browser from my laptop. When I did the search, the times were all the same, but now the pricing was presented to me in USD. Most importantly, the pricing was significantly higher, as clearly they were reflecting a higher currency conversion rate than is currently available. To make sure I wasn't just dreaming about what I had seen last night, I went back to my smartphone, where I had saved my incomplete search, and double checked. Sure enough, the pricing was still in GBP.

On the USD website, a one way adult ticket is listed as $87 for the time I chose. On my smartphone, the same ticket was priced at 56 GBP. That's an implied exchange rate over 1.55, which is significantly higher than what is available on the currency markets.

I rapidly completed my purchase of 2 adult, 1 youth and 1 child ticket on my smartphone. The pending charge on my credit card is a savings of over $60 vs. the price in USD on the website. My actual exchange rate was just under 1.26.

I'm not entirely sure why this happened, but I'd recommend anyone planning to buy Eurostar tickets check out pricing from a mobile device to see if they can get pricing in GBP. Your credit card is going to give you a much better exchange rate than Eurostar currently is.

Good luck!

Posted by
494 posts

I just bought our Eurostar tickets as well a couple of days ago. And yes, there is a big difference between using United Kingdom (in pounds) vs. United States (in US dollars) on the top right hand corner of the Eurostar website. I bought our tickets using the United Kingdom site.

Posted by
494 posts

By the way, this can also be the case if one uses Raileurope instead of booking directly.

Posted by
11 posts

Interesting, I hadn't noticed the ability to switch to the UK site on the browser before. Funny how little quirks like that can make a big difference.

Posted by
16895 posts

I think that Eurostar's US Dollar rates are basically set for the year, not frequently updated. And they then push those rates through to Rail Europe.

I don't think your mobile device is specifically what gave you British rates. On your first visit to the page from any device, they normally ask you to choose your country.

Posted by
4637 posts

It's almost always better (for you) to pay in the country currency than in dollars. Even if they offer it themselves. Their exchange course is always to their advantage. The same applies if you are in EU and pay in Euros in countries which are also in EU but have their own currency.

Posted by
15784 posts

Another quirk I found some weeks ago when I was looking up info for someone - on the French site, tickets were offered for a couple months farther out than on the UK site.

Posted by
879 posts

It is simply that Eurostar has parallel pricing for £ € and $, and with the current exchange rate it makes sense for those of us in the US to choose the UK version of the Eurostar website for tickets and £ pricing.