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Exclusive competition: Win 5,000 Club Eurostar points plus top-tier Carte Blanche status

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This week we are running a great competition in association with Eurostar to celebrate the launch of Club Eurostar.

You can win enough Club Eurostar points for two Anytime return tickets in Standard Premier. You will be able to travel to any destination, on any day you want – guaranteed (as long as cash tickets are still available for sale, obviously).

Club Eurostar is Eurostar’s new improved loyalty scheme. It merges the previous schemes – Eurostar Frequent Traveller and Eurostar Plus Points – into one.

We wrote about the announcement back in September. Eurostar Frequent Traveller was theoretically aimed at frequent business travellers whilst Eurostar Plus Points (which only offered train gift vouchers as rewards) was aimed at the leisure market. After talking to members Eurostar decided to merge the two programs into one new scheme, making it easier to join, earn and redeem.

What is new with Club Eurostar?

Unlike most loyalty scheme ‘enhancements’, Club Eurostar offers some genuine improvements over the two previous schemes.

Club Eurostar will have a very straightforward way of earning points. The scheme is now fully revenue based. For every £1 spent on Eurostar travel you will earn 1 point. Tickets priced in € will be converted to £.

Everyone will earn more points from each trip than under the old schemes with travellers on the cheapest tickets gaining most. A £54 ticket will now earn 54 points rather than 15 points under Eurostar Frequent Traveller, for example.

Redeem for any seat, any day

When it comes to redeeming, Club Eurostar has addressed what was Eurostar’s biggest issue – that many members wanted to redeem for peak Friday night and Sunday night trains but availability was limited.  Top tier Carte Blanche members could always do this, but now it has been opened up to the entire membership.

You can now redeem additional points to guarantee yourself a seat on peak time trains. The additional premium is modest – you will need 50% more points than usual for a Standard seat and just 25% more points than usual for a Standard Premier seat. There is no premium for Business Premier redemptions – you are guaranteed a seat on whatever train you want, as long as there is still one for sale.

If you are flexible about when you travel, you can continue to redeem for ‘value’ redemptions at a lower cost.

Remember that there are no taxes or charges with Club Eurostar redemptions. Your ‘free’ ticket is genuinely free.

Three tiers of membership

Club Eurostar will have three membership tiers instead of the two tiers on the Frequent Traveller programme.

Classique – your status when first joining

Avantage – after 400 points earned or 5 return trips in a membership year

Carte Blanche – after 1,800 points earned or 24 return trips in a membership year

Classique lets you earn and spend points at Eurostar and you will receive special offers.

Avantage has the benefits of Classique as well as the option to spend points at other railway partners (TGV, Thalys, Lyria) and the Club Eurostar shop.

Carte Blanche members can use the Business Premier and Rail Team lounges, get fast track access, have a dedicated Club Eurostar support team, can use the Business Premier ticket office and have a cab waiting at arrival.

Club Eurostar Shop

Another new addition to Eurostar’s loyalty scheme will be the Club Eurostar Shop.

Avantage & Carte Blanche members will be able to redeem their points for a curated range of over 500 items including wines, electronics, travel, home and fashion items. All redemptions include delivery and some products have the option to pay with a mix of points & cash.

Your chance to experience the benefits of an ‘Anytime’ redemption and Carte Blanche status

This week on Head for Points, one lucky reader will win 5,000 Club Eurostar points plus a one year top-tier Carte Blanche membership.

5,000 Club Eurostar points are enough for two Anytime return tickets in Standard Premier. You will be able to travel to any destination, on any day you want – guaranteed (as long as cash tickets are still available for sale, obviously).

Alternatively, 5,000 Club Eurostar points will get you:

three Anytime return reward trips in Standard, with 500 points left over

five Value return trips in Standard (using normal reward inventory)

two Value return trips in Standard Premier, with 1,000 points left over

one Anytime return reward trip in Business Premier, with 2,000 points left over

You left-over points can be topped up via American Express Membership Rewards points or via a transaction with one of the new Club Eurostar partners.

Your Carte Blanche status will guarantee you lounge access in London, Paris and Brussels for yourself and one guest irrespective of how you travel. My review of the impressive new Paris Lounge is here.

How to enter

As always, all you have to do to enter this competition is fill out the Gleam widget at the bottom of this page with your name and email address.

You are limited to one entry per person. Entry is limited to UK residents only and you must be over 18.  The prize is not transferable.

You need to enter by midnight on Sunday 17th December.

The formal version of the rules is in the widget below if you click ‘Terms & Conditions’. Good luck.

Category

Club Eurostar

Comments (73)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Alexey says:
    11 Dec11 December 10:46

    I don’t understand why eurostar points changes are presented in such positive tone – I see mostly major devaluation of the points for those who would be transferring from amex , earning improvements for some tickets don’t compensate for that , and I had enough tickets availability before , so in fast these chnages just killed that points scheme for me , because it will make no point to convert from amex any more and I don’t use eurostar that often to get enough point by other means

    • Rob says:
      11 Dec11 December 11:02

      If you are Carte Blanche there does appear to be a devaluation – I admit that this passed us by when we first wrote about the new scheme because neither of us has ever been Carte Blanche and we were not aware that they got ‘last seat availability’ at standard pricing. A competition article is not the place to go into that, however.

      The Amex devaluation is minor for standard redemptions. I would argue that, given that peak weekend trains are expensive for cash and only require a modest points premium for an Anytime reward, the overall value of Amex transfers has actually improved with Standard Premier being the sweet spot. For people who earn points via Eurostar travel it is an improvement and that is clearly the main constituency they want to please.

      We have no bias here – Eurostar has never paid us a penny, either in sales commissions (they don’t pay them to anyone) or in advertising.

    • john says:
      11 Dec11 December 11:56

      I’ve got CB from business trips (in standard premier), from my perspective it’s a bit of both…

      -ve…
      …my existing points have been devalued as redemptions now cost more

      +ve…
      …I’ll earn more points on future bookings
      …my partner rarely travels on Eurostar, so we never earned points on her tickets, now she can earn points and we can transfer her points into my account – on the updated website it took just a few minutes to an account for her, claim missing points from the trip we’d just made, transferred them to my account

      btw anyone who had ‘pending’ points or traveled in the week or two before the migration, they may not have credited, use the ‘claim missing points’ link – I had two return trips, one with my partner, only one of the four legs was credited, but the claim process added the missing points immediately

  • Ben says:
    11 Dec11 December 10:54

    Hi, very o/t but does anybody have a link to the BA overseas offices? Hoping to use my companion voucher but the tool posted a while back does not seem to work anymore.

  • @mkcol says:
    11 Dec11 December 11:31

    5GB

  • Eiji Hirai says:
    11 Dec11 December 11:47

    By the way, the new Club Eurostar pages fails to show your current tier expiration date, and also fails to show you number of points needed to attain the current tier or attain the next tier. These two features were useful on the old Frequent Traveller site.

    I emailed customer service asking for this information, but I haven’t heard back.

  • Down the Back says:
    11 Dec11 December 11:50

    OT: Was planning to use UBER for first ever time tomorrow at Heathrow Terminal 5 to go to Windsor, should I book in advance and give flight number (in case of delays) or wait until I land to book ?
    Also where do you go to meet the UBER at T5 ? Any advice welcome.

    Thanks
    DtB

    • Rob says:
      11 Dec11 December 12:03

      No need to book in advance. There is always a huge pool of cars waiting in the holding area.

      You meet in the short-stay car park built into the terminal. Walk out of arrivals, walk 20 steps forward to leave the terminal, walk 50 steps forward to the car park lift, and then go up to whatever level you meet on (the app tells you).

      Takes 7-8 minutes for a car to get to you from the holding area.

      • Down the Back says:
        11 Dec11 December 12:55

        Thanks Rob,

        Sounds very simple, looking forward to my first ever UBER.

        Regards

        DtB

        • Genghis says:
          11 Dec11 December 13:03

          If you have Tesco clubcard points, you can get Uber credit at 3x value.

        • ankomonkey says:
          11 Dec11 December 20:27

          So Uber’s London licence loss doesn’t include Heathrow? I have a Barclaycard (Hilton) offer of free credit that I planned to use from T4 Premier Inn to T5, but assumed “London” included Heathrow, so was no longer available.

        • the real harry1 says:
          11 Dec11 December 20:34

          Uber have appealed so can still use the licence

        • ankomonkey says:
          11 Dec11 December 22:24

          Thanks, trh1!

  • Greg says:
    11 Dec11 December 13:29

    Do you know if the part points, part cash redemption will still be available with club eurostar ?

    • john says:
      11 Dec11 December 14:09

      not at the moment

      but the FAQ says you can use points to “buy tickets, seat upgrades and, in early 2018, ticket discounts” , the latter sounds like it will be the new cash+points option

    • Nick M says:
      11 Dec11 December 15:14

      It also looks like you can use points to upgrade.. obviously this won’t give complete flexibility but one way to get a cash+points option

  • JS says:
    11 Dec11 December 14:03

    OT: Amex shop small promotion. Has anyone else found out that about 20-25% of the merchants on the amex map do not actually take amex?!

    Amex have been quite good at giving me £5 when I have had to make the purchase using another card though.

    • Alex says:
      11 Dec11 December 15:03

      Complained to the rep via chat about business not accepting amex, the answer was- “thanks for letting me know, we will update the map. ” No offer of the compensation at all.

      • Darren says:
        11 Dec11 December 15:08

        Had the same response last year, poor.

        • the real harry1 says:
          11 Dec11 December 17:50

          they are indeed pretty useless on the pro-active ‘can we sort out your missing £5’ front

          I find when they get to the dismiss stage, a polite direct hit works best: ‘there’s just the small matter of my £5 statement credit: I made a special trip to buy xyz in that shop because of the Shop Small promotion, only to find they don’t take Amex – so I’m £5 down plus petrol expenses’

        • Graeme says:
          11 Dec11 December 18:57

          I’m currently in chat about a post office counter offer where they didn’t take Amex on the self service tills… I intend using harry’s line should I get no-where, its a bit convoluted for a fiver.. I guess that’s part of the plan that you’ll give up after a while.. 🙂

        • Graeme says:
          11 Dec11 December 19:04

          Well I never needed to go that far and offer the harry line, although somewhat protracted an offer of a statement credit was made without the need to ask, clearly some scripted responses but all in all not a bad experience. All resolved to my satisfaction so I’m happy.

        • the real harry1 says:
          11 Dec11 December 21:01

          it’s not for the fiver – it’s for the win! 🙂

      • JS says:
        11 Dec11 December 19:48

        I just ask for the £5 credit, and offer to provide the receipt proving I’ve shopped there (not using amex). They have never asked for the receipt and just give me the £5.

        They say they will update the map, but I have never seen the incorrect merchants disappear from it.

    • Mark says:
      11 Dec11 December 17:42

      Or rather – they do not want to admit it, so they pay lower fees elsewhere?
      Try this: keep two cards to hand, show them the non-amex then use the other!
      My local pub always insist they didn’t take Amex – strange how their proximiry card-reader always does!

      • JS says:
        11 Dec11 December 19:49

        One of the merchants who was on the amex map said they changed card processor >1y ago due to high fees. This was after I tried the contactless machine and it double beeped. In this one case I don’t think they are just lying to get you to avoid paying by amex.

    • Frenske says:
      11 Dec11 December 18:32

      Every year it is the same. I can understand that might not be able to have a day-to-day up-to-date map, but there are companies who have not accepted AmEx for years.

      • ankomonkey says:
        11 Dec11 December 20:06

        +1. One shop I reported and got a statement credit for 4 years ago is still on the map and still doesn’t take Amex (I check every year).

    • Rob says:
      13 Dec13 December 00:24

      Yeah, recurring problem.

  • Waribai says:
    11 Dec11 December 20:49

    I’ve successfully received circa £30 (6 x £5) credit adjustments on each of our 8 cards. I hit the buffers over the weekend though when they started to politely refuse anymore!

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