@Jody , @Nanja , @rvdborgt : Feedback for Interrail/Eurail System, Website, App
Dear Interrail/Eurail team,
This year we tried the experiment to avoid planes and cars for our summer holiday outside our country of residence. This is my first time buying an Interrail ticket and so many things went wrong even before the trip that I decided to share my feedback as a new customer for you to improve the service. There is a desperate need to improve it, especially if you as an Interrail team not only try to make money but try to improve travelling through Europe and to improve the offer in order for more people avoiding cars and planes and riding trains.
Of course you can just ignore this and throw it into a trash can - in the end it's just feedback - but I beg you to try to improve the whole concept, system, website and app in order to make train travelling a better option than flying or taking a car. I don't need justifications for any of the points, just see this as free consulting.
Dear other travellers: Feel free to add your amendments/suggestions/comments for these points.
Booking reservations:
B1: rURGENT] Give mobile pass users a "passholder number" / "Pass Cover number" or make travel.b-europe.com work for users of a mobile pass! Seriously, soooooo many people have the problem that they can't book their ticket on travel.b-europe.com because you don't have that number when booking a mobile pass. The solution is not that every single mobile pass users that can't book on interrail.eu for some reason desperately searches for a solution for hours and wastes time of his or her and your support team!
If you are a traveller and have the same problem, please call the booking hotline of the train operator, e.g. call SNCF if you want to ride a TGV in France. They will help you to book a seat, although a bit more expensive.
Totally agree that Mobile pass user should get a PassCoverNumber or the mobilepasses should be accepted on the Websites like Sj.se or Travel B Europe.
B2: Try to streamline the booking process when being forwarded from interrail to travel.b-europe.com:
--> copy all user information (destination, arrival, date, time, travellers) like it is done when being redirected from the app to interrail.eu
--> try to make booking via travel.b-europe.com superfluous (I read of many users that couldn't book their TGV seats because they seem to be booked out, which they are certainly not if they can still be booked via SNCF, and they had to use travel.b-europe.com) because interrail.eu said "Prices unavailable"
Yeah still an issue i don´t know how Interrail is connected with the French booking system but it looks like there IT-department should it improve :) (I know they are working on it.)
B3: In the app (planner/my trip -> "How and then to book?") and in forums, it says you can "Book at major train stations" as well. This is not true! I was in a "DB Reisezentrum" at the Karlsruhe main station in Germany today (drove there without success and waited 20 minutes for nothing) and they told me I can only reserve a TGV ticket from Karlsruhe to Paris, but not for any TGV within France.
--> Make booking seat reservations possible through all train reservation offices in Europe
--> Make booking seat reservations possible through all major train station ticket machines in Europe (even in advance)
Atleast you could book it in major station in France. And here you should blame the railcompanies and not Eurail because they make it more and more difficult because everybody wants to sell their own offer (For example the UK announced they would leave the Eurail/Interrail validity area to improve the sales of their own Britrailpasses) luckily they made within 2 days a u turn and stayed in the area)
To get a all European ticket possibilty you should target the Railcompanies and maybe the European politicans because there so many EU Laws to have a EU -Wide standard but there is still non for getting Railtickets :/
B4: TGVs seem to have a "contingent" for Interrail passengers. Even though the TGVs can still be booked regularly via SNCF for a high price, the same train can often not be selected for a seat reservation at interrail.eu. When calling SNCF, I was able to book seats (though for a slightly higher reservation fee) - it says "INTERRAIL NON CONTINGENTÉ 2ÈME CLASSE - IR01" on the ticket, so this seems to be a loophole through the contingent.
--> Why is there a contingent at all? Is Interrail a proper ticket or is it just a third class discount see-how-you-get-along-you-stupid-victim ticket? If the latter one applies, keep it that way. If not, see how you can improve the situation.
--> If SNCF (and other train operators) refuse to remove the contingent system, please ask them to significantly increase the contingent for Interrail passengers! I wouldn't have bought the Interrail Pass if I knew what struggle it was to book TGVs, how much luck I need to have and which extra costs occur - for my journey, booking via SNCF directly would have been cheaper and much easier (now that I now all the extra fees and the pain)! My conclusion is to avoid Interrail for the future and discourage friends from buying it - is this what you wanted? I guess not.
Thats one more a reason to blame the Companies. Countries like Spain (Renfe), France (SNCF) and Italy (Trenitalia) are the most popular destionations of the Interrail/Eurail and all companies thought they didn´t get enough money out of the sell of Eurail & Interrail passes. Because of that they invented the compulsory reservations and the “conntingend” trains that only have a specific amount. The railcompanies took notice that the tourist often have a fixed plan (and doesn´t travel free as the Railpass is aimed for) and because of that people pay expensive overpriced tickets as they stic to their plans. My only suggestion stop useing the expensive trains and take the slower regional trains that are mostly reservation free :)
Website:
W1: When new users visit your site for the first time, they can enter where they go and a map pops up with the price of the ticket. This is very cool, but it is very confusing in the beginning (and not easy to find a simple answer) that if someone for example wants to visit France but starts in another country (which certainly most people do), most commonly the country of residence, for example Germany, the user actually needs a Global Pass instead of a One Country Pass, which means you have to pick "Germany" as a first "Destination" to get the proper suggestion.
--> directly make clear on the homepage that people who make a trip from one to another country need a Global Pass.
--> make the trip planner map less confusing by offering a "from" field (e.g. "Where do you start your journey?")
--> add this information in the FAQ and in the pop-up that appears after clicking "Show Results" -> "About this Pass", e.g. "One Country Pass xy: ... Only valid when travelling within the selected country. If you want to take a train from anther country, e.g. your country of residence, you need a Global Pass eLink]"
It´s clearly written and during the booking process there is before the payment even a warining about that.
W2: For the "Global Pass", make the information more visible that people only have one outbound and one inbound trip from their country of residence inclusive, e.g.:
--> add this information in the FAQ and in the pop-up in the trip planner map that appears after clicking "Show Results" -> "About this Pass", e.g.: "Global Pass: ... You can only book one outbound and one inbound trip from your country of residence. I you want to leave and enter your country of residence multiple times, you need to buy a separate ticket for this second journey."
W3: When trying to book a seat through the App, at one step you are being forwarded from the App to the Website, where you need to select a trip ("Step 2 of 2"). Even though I selected a trip, I cannot continue oftentimes. There's just no button to continue!?
Ok, I double checked now and I need to scroll to the very end of the page multiple times. So I need to scroll down to the end, then scroll down to the "next end" (where nothing appears but the "Our partners include" footer with logos), and when I release my finger, the "Done" button suddenly appears out of nowhere. This is very confusing! Maybe too many scrollable <div> html elements within each other? I don't know if this a browser problem, but please try to fix it. (I use a OnePlus 3 "A30003" on Android 7.1.1 and use Vivaldi 5.0.2498.20 if that helps).
W4: When trying to book a seat via https://travel.b-europe.com/Eurail-GE/en/booking-tgv , this is not possible for TGV connections from Germany. TGVs depart in Karlsruhe (and I think also Stuttgart and other cities as well), but when entering them, the page says “No matches for your search query.” The cities are found when searching them on https://travel.b-europe.com/ , but this doesn’t help me with my Interrail pass.
Here you have once more the problem of the different booking systems :) Belgian Rail (the company behind travel b-europe) conneceted their website with the french domestic reservation system but not with the International one.
W5: Unimportant] The Smiley’s of this forum editor don’t work in my browser, I just see boxes with crosses. ← I don’t know what smiley this is, it’s just a box when writing this post.
Yeah i always struggle because of that quite a lot :) in my posts.
Concept of Interrail in general:
C1: Why is there only one outbound and one inbound trip from/to my country of residence? This looks like nonsense to me. What if I want to make two summer holidays, one week in France, one week in Poland with one week at home in between and I buy the Interrail ticket for this purpose. Can I even pass my country of residence (e.g. Germany) if I travel Germany -> France -> Poland -> Germany? Or do I need to make a "detour" over Switzerland, Austria and Czechia for the Interrail ticket to work? This is certainly unnecessary and stupid.
--> If there are reasons for this, get rid of them! (or at least explain them to the user)
Interrail is aimed to explore foreign cultures within Europe and had many years no Inbound Outbound Journey´s. Luckily they added this feature few years ago and maybe they improve it for even more journey´s. The problem is that some Interrailpasses are quite cheap and because of that are used to undermine local ticket offers. Best example was the 3days in one month Global Pass (now 4 days in a month Globalpass). The passes was used in Great Britain and Germany often just for domestic routes. Travelers used on day one their outbound journey to get e.g. from Scotland to London or Berlin to Freiburg and used on their second travelday the pass for the return and never used the 3rd travelday. Because the Railpass didn´t now a peak time or is bounded on a specific train.
C2: Why are there even two completely separate websites "interrail.eu" and "eurail.com"? I get that it's cheaper for people living in Europe but what a waste of resources for all your developers and marketing guys!
--> Just add a checkbox "I am a resident of Europe" in the booking process and add call it "Global Pass (European)" and "Global Pass (International)" or so. Also include a simple table on the website with the number of days to travel in how many months, number of countries to travel in and weather or not you're a European resident and everyone is able to compare prices on one page quickly. (I can send an example in case you're interested)
Because there were some different rules about Interrail and Eurail (the Eurail offer is a few years older as Interrail) if you follow the process of Interrail & Eurail you notice that they more and more make the offer identical. For example this Community for both Interrail and Eurail (before that there were 2 different Facebook groups one aimed for Interrail and one for Eurail)
Pricing:
P1: Try to make interrail cheaper in general. Easier said than done, I know. Avoid unnecessary stuff and benefit and focus on train travel. Make things work properly so you have to spend less on support and convince people of your service so they tell their friends and they are your next customers. Maybe also the EU wants to support you guys financially more than currently? (Fit for 55 and so on, there's a strong ecological and unfortunately now also a political interest to reduce emissions and avoid fossil fuels.) How can it be that kerosene is tax free when people have to pay a high VAT to travel by train?
The question is what is unnecessary stuff and which not. There are several railpasses on the market with that Eurail have to competet.
SwissRailPass (covers more as the Interrail/Eurail one Country pass )
TrenitaliaPass (here are the reservations included like in the former Interrail Italy or Spain One Country Premiumpasses) Strange that these premium passes dissappeard as Trenitalia announed their own “Trenitaliapass”
P2: Avoid costly seat reservations (or make them cheaper than 10€ per train). And even more important, avoid this stupid 4€ booking fee! This neocapitalistic piecemeal strategy makes me so aggressive and reminds me of bookings made in the US in general. A dollar here, a percent more there, another booking fee here and in the end you pay twice the price that you saw upfront. If I buy a 246 € ticket which claims I can use it to travel 4 days within one month, then I want to do exactly that what is promised! I don't want to pay a total extra of 56 € (no joke!) to use the trains I wanted to. This is borderline fraud. Seriously, if your marketing manager tells you to do such sneaky things, disagree with him! They make the world a worse place.
--> Remove seat reservations completely or at least make them as cheap as possible, e.g. 5 €.
--> Remove any booking fees that come afterwards completely. If you need the money desperately, make the price of the Interrail ticket 10€ more expensive. Almost nobody will notice.
--> Also remove the fee for the paper pass. If you want people to use your app, improve it first and then make interrail tickets 10€ more expensive and give app users a 10€ discount (i.e. they pay the same as they do now). People hate it when you take away but they love discounts.
Same story as already above blame the railcompanies about that and if you don´t like that just avoid them. Aslong tourist pay that, the railcompanies wont change it. Eurail is on thin Ice between keeping the railcompanies in the System (and maybe get even new countries in like in the last years the Baltic Countries)
About the booking fee yeah it´s quite unfair but i assume it´s for the work that is behind the Reservation System it tooks quite a lot time to stay connected with the different booking plattforms and keep everything working and uptodate.
App:
A1: Make booking of seats possible through the app. This is not possible at least on my journey with TGVs through France.
Yeah totally agree and i know it´s on the bucket list of Eurail to do it in the future. If you stay in this community and take part in one of the user tests that happen from time to time you get an idea what Eurail plans for the future.
A2: Explain things in the App and make it as easy to understand as possible to newbies. I know many things are somewhere in the FAQ or even in the mail with the tickets but almost everyone receives too many mails to read them all in every detail, so just try to make the app self-explanatory in the first place, e.g.:
--> I remember I was very scared to press the "activate" button after adding the ticket. "Does it mean my first day is used now? I better not press it but wait until the day I travel.". E.g. add a gray text below the button that explains you need to activate the ticket to plan the trip and add bookings (if this is true, which I guess it is) but this doesn't mean I have to start my journey now when pressing "activate".
--> add the "passholder number" / "Pass Cover number" in the app
A3: Add an option to add (externally booked) seat reservations in the app. E.g. I got 5 pdfs with 6 tickets from SNCF which I all have to print out or keep on my phone. Would be nice if it's possible to scan the code and add it to a trip so everything is at hand easily.
Great idea would love this feature.
To be continued... My journey didn't even start ;)
Best regards,
Matthias