Problem of connection

  • 20 January 2023
  • 7 replies
  • 148 views

Hello, 

I tried to reserve a seat this morning for an extra fee but it didn't work on the website. Indeed, my Italy trip with all my trains did not appear anymore, nor the travelers participating in the trip (me). I tried to connect with my pass number at least 5 times and it didn't appear each time.
So I had to pay a new train ticket on the French SNCF Connect application in 1st class at 235,30€ (almost the full price of the pass) since I couldn't book other trains to Paris from Interrail.
I don’t know what to do as I don’t find any number to call in Interrail. 
thanks for your advice. 


7 replies

Thank you very much for your answers !

Indeed, I made bad choices by choosing to pay the entire ticket from Milano to Paris instead of searching shorter and cheaper connections to go back to France, by going to Mulhouse for example. I just panicked when I saw that the website wasn’t working and that I couldn’t make my seat reservations for the connections I wanted.

I will be more careful next time and thank you again for your feedbacks, it was really helpful !

 

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

You can only have one trip connect to your pass. All journeys have to be connected to the same trip. 

The reservations are separate from your pass in the app.

 

There are better ways to make reservations than the Interrail/Eurail website, please read more about that below. 

 

Here is some useful information from the experienced travellers in the Community regarding both planning, reservations and activation of pass and travel days. 

 Planning

The rail planner is normally not up to date, as it only is updated once a month, so to be sure of the time table you better check the timetable and availability on the websites of the national railways. The bigger national railways, like DB (Germany) SBB (Switzerland) and ÖBB (Austria) cover several countries. 

 Reservations 

The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is to use other ways to make reservations than the Interrail/Eurail website.  You can look at the guide in the link:

https://community.eurail.com/train-connections-reservations-47/how-to-get-reservations-105

If you, after having looked at the guide, have questions about how to make specific reservation, please give your travel details (departure date, time and route) preferably in a new topic, and you will get advice.

Please note that Interrail/Eurail charges an extra fee of 2 EUR per person and train in addition to the fee for the seat reservation.

 Activation of pass

During the activation process you choose the start day of the validity of the pass. Once the validity has started it can't be changed even if you haven't travelled. The advice is therefore to wait with activating the pass and starting the validity until the first day of your travel as you only can deactivate the pass no later than 23.59 CET on the day before the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you can't deactivate the pass and change the validity. 

It can be wise to make a test and activate the pass with a start date well in the future and then deactivate the pass immediately, just to see that everything works.

 Activation of travel day

The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is also never to activate a travel day, that is connect a journey to your pass and create the ticket (QR code), until just before boarding the train, otherwise you might loose a travel day if your travel plans change in a late stage  You can't delete a travel day in the past. A travel day can only be deleted until 23.59 CET the day before the travel day.

Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Maybe next time ask for a reservation Milan to Zürich. Trenitalia can sell it. They can’t sell to Paris due to that Trenitalia and SNCF are competitors and don’t work together. But they can strangely sell normal fare tickets of the TGV Lyria. 

Also possible is to use direct TGV service Milan-Paris.

Also possible to pay on board of the train of the Eurocity for 11 EUR + 20 or 25 EUR fee. Also possible to take reservation free trains from Milan to Lugano and change there to the Eurocity and Intercity in Switzerland they are reservation optional. In the mean time you would have time to find a solution for the TGV to Paris. 

It's not totally clear what you did and why. 

Seems that you wanted to go Milano - Zürich - Paris at 5.39?

The next connection on this route would have been at 6.43 without any need for a reservation to get you into France. You just had to show your pass. So why did you buy a normal ticket for 235,30 Euro if you had a valid railpass to show? 

(There would just have been a need for a new reservation from the station in Mulhouse for 10 € to be in Paris at 15.14. It would also have been possible to be in Paris at 17.16 without any reservation at all so without any additional cost at all, too. So it seems that you did pay 235,30 € to be in Paris 96 minutes earlier (I assume you did pay for the 7.20 to 15.40 connection) than with the totally reservation-free connection?)

Thank you very much for your answers.

 

Yesterday morning, at 5:30 am, I was in Milan train station and I just missed my train scheduled at 5:39 (it was obviously my fault).

So I checked on the Interrail app other trains that went to Paris later in the morning and I found one at 7:20 am, with some reservations seats fees at 42 euros.

I went on the Interrail website to pay the reservations fees, I successfully connected to the website with my email adress, my family name and my pass number but on the website, I couldn’t find my trip or me as a traveller in my pass. I tried to create another trip and add me as a traveller but each time, the trip disappeared  and I couldn’t book my reservations seats on the website. I tried to ask to the employees of the station but they couldn’t help me.


So I had to pay the full price of a ticket to get the train and as there were only last minute 1st class tickets left, I paid over 200 euros for my ticket because my interrail account on Internet couldn’t allow me to pay the reservations seats fees to have the train.

 

Is there anything that you or I can do ?

Thank you very much for your time and your answer.

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

To be able to help we indeed need to know the exact trains (route, date, departure time for each train).

Userlevel 7
Badge +7

Sounds something for customer support: https://eurail.zendesk.com/hc/en-001/requests/new

There are some other ways to reserve your seats, apart from the Interrail website. Or you could always try to get them at the ticket office. See link below for an overview, best read it thoroughly:

https://community.eurail.com/train-connections-reservations-47/how-to-get-reservations-105

I'm not sure what the issue is exactly. Can you describe it a bit more what you did, or the steps you followed, or provide screenshots? (But please remove all your personal details). 

Trains disappearing in "My Trip" can always be solved by adding trains manually, but a faulty reservation service is annoying of course.

Which trains you were taking exactly? 

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