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I bought a Eurail Global Mobile pass recently, I’m having a lot of issues with Eurail's Eurostar booking process.

  1. On May 16th, I tried to booked London-Lille Eurostar seat reservations for two people for June 3rd on https://www.eurail.com/en/book-reservations#/. I paid for the ticket and the charges are fully processed (not pending any more) on my credit card. However, I do not see the reservation tickets on my account https://www.eurail.com/en/my-account/reservation-booking-details/my-itinerary, nor have I received any confirmation email. It’s not clear to me whether the ticket was actually booked, and this is putting me in a limbo because if it’s not booked, I would need to book other options (e.g. flights) as soon as possible.
  2. I contacted Eurail customer support about a related issue (#163688), and they mentioned “I can see that a pre-reservation was made for London-Lille on 03/06.” However, I still do not see the London-Lille seat reservations on https://www.eurail.com/en/my-account/reservation-booking-details/my-itinerary and I cannot access this seat reservation anywhere.
  3. The “related issue” that I contacted Eurail about was to get my Pass Cover Number (which is only provided with the Paper pass) to use with b-europe, because Eurail’s new seat reservation system https://www.eurail.com/en/book-reservations#/ was so terrible to use in the USA (it was extremely slow and often did not load). Now that I’ve arrived at Europe, the seat reservation system is much faster to use now, but I would still like to get my Pass Cover Number for usage with b-europe in case the Eurail system is buggy again. Could a customer support representative continue helping me with issue (#163688)? I previously received a response from Eurail: “Thank you for your e-mails and your question. I can see that a pre-reservation was made for London-Lille on 03/06. Is it this journey that you were trying to book via b-europe? Could you please confirm? Thank you in advance.” but this did not give me the Pass Cover Number that I need for future booking, and Eurail customer support has not responded to me since.

Overall I’m quite disappointed in the Eurail website and customer support experience. I filed my issues on May 16, received a response on May 18 that did not solve any of my problems, asked the Eurail representative for more information, and did not receive any response again.

I used Eurail on a previous trip back in September 2021 and it was much much smoother than this. The seat reservation website (I remember it was green, instead of yellow) did not have any issues. It seems like there’s a website redesign that’s messing things up for the users. I hope this issue is sorted out soon, otherwise I would very much reconsider using Eurail again in the future. It’s adding a lot of hassle to my trip planning.

The Eurail staff that are helping out in the community are working European office hours, so they can't help before Monday.

Regarding the Pass Cover Number you can contact Customer Support using this form. Please make it very clear to Customer Support that you are currently travelling and need immediate help.

https://eurail.zendesk.com/hc/en-001/requests/new

For many routes there are different possibilities to make reservations and some don't require the Pass Cover Number.

If you write what reservations you want to make, hopefully you can get advice on how to reserve without the Pass Cover Number

I see, should I file another request even though I’ve already reached out multiple times (issue #163688 mentioned above)? I feel like their system is pretty swamped, and this post was kinda a desperation post hoping for a Eurail staff to come across my post and help me. Yeah I know the Pass Cover Number could be specific to b-europe / Eurostar, but I’m pretty sure the only two ways to book this for a Eurail Mobile pass are Eurail’s own website and b-europe. I also found b-europe to have more available train seats/times than Eurail’s own booking website.

Finally got a resolution from a representative. Turns out the “pre-reservation was made” but “no tickets were booked”, so the tickets had to be cancelled. Also was able to get my pass cover number as well. Thankfully the Eurostar tickets that I wanted were not booked out, but in general fairly disappointed in the new Eurail software, seems like there’s a lot more egregious bugs than the old green website. Hope they can fix these software issues so that representatives have less unforced errors to deal with and customers’ plans do not get disrupted.

Eurostar and any other trains in/from/to France can also be booked by phone via SNCF. Press #85 for English, no booking fees, reservations are sent via e-mail.

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