This does seem pretty unhelpful from Eurail in the case of a genuine mistake. I’ve generally found their Customer Services to be helpful if you get through to a real person, but slow and difficult to actually get through.

If you can’t get them to refund it, at lease make sure you log into Eurostar and choose seats next to each other for your ghost booking, so you have a spare seat next to you!

Many thanks for the advice ralderton , I think I may go for the ghost booking as you suggest.Im not even aware that eurorail has a number as I was told they were unreachable by phone ?

I’ve never tried by phone, but I have had some success reaching them on Twitter. 

I’ve had this before and I ended up just rescheduling the duplicate booking for €15. It’s not ideal, but if you use IR+E* regularly, it can work well.

Yes, this is a good idea if you’ll take the same journey again (same origin and destination) in the future. It should cost £15/ €15 to change, and you can do it through manage booking on the Eurostar website (although I have heard of it sometimes offering to change for free!).

Still, better to push for the refund if you can.

You could try ringing Eurostar's contact centre (+44 (0)3432 186 186), explain your mistake and ask, if they're in a more forgiving mood, if they could exchange the duplicate order value for an e-voucher.

You'd hope they'd see the benefit in doing so: it's not a refund and they could then resell those seats at full value. And you could use the voucher for another Eurostar trip (Pass or no Pass) or on one of their hotel deals.

Not a guarantee but I'd give it a try too. 

Thanks - I’ll try that

Thank you for contributing Ikoroes, I may well do that, cheers

Thanks JDH - I did try contacting them yesterday but a pre-recorded message said that the phone lines were down. I’ll give them another try and see if I can persuade them to give me an e voucher as you suggest, fingers crossed…..