Another day, another bollocks Eurostar experience

When will companies get that ‘internet’ is not just another nice-to-have? It’s not just an also-ran for a whole array of business executives, it’s actually important.

I’m sitting in the Eurostar terminal’s business class lounge right now at Kings Cross St Pancras. I’ve paid £450 for the return ticket. I paid the money partly because I want a big seat without somebody waving their newspaper in my face. And partly because I want stuff done. I want it to work. I don’t want to have to think. Create an exception for me and you’re costing me a lot of money in attention. Indeed, since so much of my work is cerebral, any exception that forces me to have to deal with shit gets really, really annoying.

Witness, for example, the frack-up last week when I changed my ticket from the 8pm to the 7pm train in Paris. The lady at the counter swapped the ticket for me in 30 seconds. I then spent the next 30 minutes dicking about — DICKING — about because the Eurostar reservation system literally double-booked.

What kind of bollocks reservation system double-books? I moved about the carriage three times, each time prompted by the Eurostar lady with her flimsy piece of paper printed at least an hour before. My name wasn’t on it — that’s why I know it was out of date. What the frack is Eurostar giving its team information on BITS of paper for? Why aren’t they carrying a dynamically updating ‘device’ of some sort to give them real time data? So. Stuff like this winds me up. It wound me up even more because I’d paid £225 for the privilege.

Back to the flipping WiFi.

Again, pay the top dollar and you’re supposed to get service. The business class section at Kings Cross is nice. There’s a team of attentive folk walking about asking if you’d like another drink. There are peanuts ready to be spooned on to waiting plates. There are mini cans of lemonade. There are newspapers and magazines.

And there’s bog-standard bollocks internet. It’s perfectly fine if you’re a consumer. When you are trying to while away the 40 minutes before your train boards, waiting a few minutes for your laptop to display your hotmail is, I suspect, wholly acceptable.

I was trying to actually work. You know. Work. In the business section. And that requires me to have fast internet.

Honestly, it’s literally quicker to connect to my 3UK MiFi dongle than it is to use the WiFi — which, by the way, is the same WiFi you get if you sit 5m to my right in the standard class area. It’s the ‘St Pancras WiFi’. That me and about a billion other people are leeching of.

And the sodding power socket by my chair doesn’t work. So my laptop battery is now at 33%. Gaahh.

Thanks a lot Eurostar.

I really was wondering whether I should bother spunking £450 on a business class ticket each week. I’m slowly getting the message that it’s a stupid, stupid way to behave.