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@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: [URGENT] 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.

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"

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)

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.

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 [Link]"

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.

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.

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)

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)

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?

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.

App:
A1: Make booking of seats possible through the app. This is not possible at least on my journey with TGVs through France.

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.

To be continued... My journey didn't even start ;)

Best regards,
Matthias

@Matthias thanks for the write-up, I don't have a lot to add after what @seewulf wrote.

The most important thing for Eurail/Interrail though is:

Make things work properly so you have to spend less on support

I couldn't agree more. I wrote something similar here, after I was triggered by the subject "user experience”:

I didn't realise access was limited. Here's my complete text:

I had a look at the ideas in the survey but there are really more important things to tackle first.

For a better user experience, we first need:

1. Get rid of the bugs that hinder people to use the pass. I had hoped that after the mishap with the 18.1.1 update on 15 July 2021 (after which peoples’ passes just vanished from the app), the testing strategy would have been adapted to prevent something like that to happen again. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case, as we now see with the surge of problems people have with (as it seems) the iPhone versions. There are problems to activate a pass, add journeys to My Trip and My Pass, show the ticket and who knows what else. I've also seen strange things on my Android phone but the app fortunately kept working still. But this makes me very, very nervous for every app update when I'm travelling. I don't feel like I can trust these updates and switched off automatic updates. Also the unannounced requirement change from iOS 10 to iOS 13 is a big problem for users who started to travel and now find their apps have been rendered unusable. Not to mention that the conditions of use still mention iOS 10. Are we going to see the same issue with Android requirements? I'd be very nervous to start travelling with Android 6.
2. Up to date timetables. There should be at least one update per week or else information just cannot be trusted. Maybe separate the timetable updates from the functionality updates.
3. Correct information. If you include information about which trains are (not) included in the pass, which ones require a reservation and what the reservations cost, then this information should be correct (in 99.9% of the cases). Unfortunately, I've seen too much incorrect information. I report if I have the time but in any case, I don't feel I can trust this kind of information in the app.
4. A working reservation module (granted, this is not in the app but still...). Currently, Eurostar cannot be booked, tomorrow it will be another operator (Eurostar can still be booked elsewhere so it's not on their side). And how long will it take before the 20€ reservations in French domestic trains can finally be booked? I have never seen that working in the reservations module over the past year. How often doesn't it happen that the reservations module claims that one leg is not available, while it can be booked without any problem elsewhere?
5. E-reservations where possible. We know Spanish railways aren't exactly co-operative but for most other reservations, it should not be necessary to issue them on paper. E.g. if Entur can send Norwegian reservations via e-mail, then why can't Interrail? If ČD can issue e-reservations from Czechia to Poland, then why can't Interrail? Etc.
   Edit: SNCF can issue e-reservations to Barcelona, so why can't Interrail?
6. Less expensive reservations where possible. If you already add a 2€ booking fee per person and train, then why book optional reservations through an expensive provider that charges 6€ per person and train, making the total fee 8€? Why can't optional seat reservations be routed via DB (4€ per person and journey) or ÖBB (3€ per person and train)?

Edit:

improvements in these points will also immediately result in fewer requests for customer support, especially 1 and 4.

It would be interesting if points in the Eurail community were not only earned by commenting, but also by purchasing passes, similar to some train companies. Later, these points could be used again when purchasing new Interrail or Eurail passes, much like reward points.