Thanks to the community

  • 20 September 2022
  • 6 replies
  • 121 views

Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Just a simple thanks to the community for their advice in their posts. They have helped no end through a difficult challenge today.

Regrettably we had to change next weeks plans from a 5 travel day cross-europe jaunt to a quick dash to Monaco and home (flight and hotel already paid for). 

Our return home will now be Nice - Lille - London - Leeds, needing those dreaded reservations for TGVs and Eurostar. 

Because of the advice I managed to book 2 TGVs (1 at 10 euro and 1 at 20 euro) and an early afternoon Eurostar through B-Europe (link from posts) with Pass Cover Numbers (from a link  in a post). At several points it looked hopeless with error messages and starting again but we stayed with it thanks to the advice in many posts on regular work rounds.

The weirdest was on the b-europe site where it would not accept mouse clicks for selecting entries on drop down lists but would let me select with my touchscreen. That took some time (and a few choice words) to sort.

We even managed to get all 3 as e-reservations within seconds.

So my key tip is if you get an error message that a transaction has failed, be paatient, start again and check all your entries.


6 replies

Userlevel 1
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I agree - the community has helped me a lot, and I do give feedback! I’m from Ausralia and three days in to my three month global pass and dealing with the French train strikes - so much for all that careful planning!  have other people been impacted?  I shall try and work out an alternative route north from the south of France to Germany,  so thank goodness for the pass.

Userlevel 2
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I have been so grateful for all the help I have received in this community. Not only has it been so very helpful to get my head around using the pass, booking seat reservations, activating the pass, but every time I have asked a question I have received a helpful response within a really short time frame. I’m taking my 20 year old daughter on a mother/daughter trip to Europe for 5 weeks so all the planning, booking, etc has pretty much been left to me. It’s such a relief to know if I have an issue I can jump on here and know someone will help.

Thank you so much to everyone who has helped me, I’ll be glad when I’ve activated that first day and see it all come together! You’re a bunch of legends!!

PS: Coming from Australia this train travel is so different for us!

PPS: I’ll put an update on here when we get back!!

 

Userlevel 3
Badge +1

Dear RvdBorgt,

 I really appreciate the clear and polite way in which you provide information, supplement or correct others' answers as necessary.
 As for the community, I'll try to give feedback after a question about how it went afterwards.

Badge +5

Yes it was lovely to get some feedback. I know a lot of people in the community spend a lot of time helping travellers. I expect a lot of people assume we work for Interrail or Eurail and don’t appreciate that the regular responders just want to help people based on their expertise. I realise that it can be frustrating to get the same problems over and over again (TGVs to/from Spain) but the system is very difficult to navigate for people unfamiliar with the European rail system. For people from USA I think the marketing rather obscures the realities of travel on high speed trains to the cities many Americans want to see. I have been travelling for over 40 years in Europe and still need to turn to the community for some problems where local correspondents know the exact answer! Perhaps the leaders on the points board should give themselves a slap on the back for the great work they do.

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

I totally agree with @MartinM . It is very nice with feedback as many people not even respond to the advice given.

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Just wanted to say thanks for your post - this has style!

Many people here ask for advice but don’t give a feedback how their problem ended and also don’t say thanks. Really bad behavior - many people here take a lot of time to answer (ok, during working hours in office, but still :D) and try to help with their problems and they don’t even say thanks.

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