Great Western Coffee Shop

I read in today's paper that the French railways are also suffering strike action over the Christmas period. SNCF have stated that they will refund would-be passengers with double the fare they paid if they cannot travel.  Any chance GWR, SWR, TPE, Avanti, etc, etc, etc........................ ???

Think of the inflation that would stoke, as people rush to invest in First Class Anytime Returns, confident of rapidly doubling their money! ;D

The refund/rebooking plus "exceptional" 200% compensation applies to SNCF-marketed services: TGV(INOUI/OUIGO) and Intercités, which are all reserved places. For TERs they refer you to the relevant region. But that 200% whether you travel or not, for which e-mails are already going out, is obviously a big safety net, like the guarantees offered during Covid-time, to encourage customers to trust the proven untrustworthy.

In fact this strike, caused by a group of controlleurs, but negotiated by the unions for them, has just been settled. That is too late to save Christmas, but removes the threat of similar at New Year. Unless of course someone else wants to join in!

It would be my luck to buy four 1st Class Anytime from Nice to Calais, then read that the strike has been called off at the last minute.

That souped-up compensation was so different from the standard one that a new system was set up to process claims. And guess what - it doesn't work properly (yet)! One explanation is that a quarter of the 200,000 claimants had cancelled their tickets, meaning the record of it was deleted and manual processing is needed. But a lot of the rest are still waiting, or (for example) making new claims/complaints for the replacement of vouchers that were incorrectly made out and in some cases invalid.