Reservation with Mobile Pass

With interrail mobile passes, pass cover numbers are not issued. If you really need one (should be only the case when booking directly at a railways portal or third party portal), you can ask interrail support to create one for you. Did you make sure that you use the correct reservation portal?

I can choose in the Rail Planner App if I have a mobile or paper pass:

Perhaps you also try it over the app.

I have the same problem and didn’t find any helpful information.

The answer from runner.on.rails did not help either.

How can a traveler with an online passport be registered without this passport cover number?

Thanks, we will ask the support.
Sure, the reservations portal was correct, I tried to make reservations via InterRail.eu web.

nadinejaud: Did you write to the support yet?

Hi Petr

No, i have not contacted support yet. I will inquire at our railroad on friday.

As @runner.on.rails  said actual there is no PassCovernumber for Mobilepasses :/

The CIV Issuer Code is the code of the Country/Company you purchased the ticket from

If bought directly from Interrail/Eurail the Code is: 9901 

Italy have forexample 0083 or Deutsche Bahn have 1080 as CIV Code :)

You found this 4 digit code quite often even on Standard International tickets :)

Maybe @Nanja  or the Customer Service? have a answer how to handle it in the future :)

I’ve the same problem. I bought a Global pass in march for me. I bought today two Global pass for two youths to travel together. When I want to make a reservation, I need to chose the two youth or me alone, but not the three together. I tried to ad travellers to my trip, but I need a Cover pass number… that I don’t have with the mobile pass.

I don’t know how to do… Thank you for helping me

I bought a 5 day 1 country pass and I don’t understand how to make a reservation.  I have claimed the tickets and scheduled the trip.  I have to goto the interrail site to make seat reservations, but when I try to check out, the Billing section has Country a mandatory field.  The United States is not listed, so what do I do? 

Interrail is for Europeans for Non Europeans you have to visit the Eurail website then you can select the United States :) 

Seewulf is right, you will need to visit the Eurail site. Cheers, 

This is madness… They try to convince you to buy a mobile ticket and say it’s cheaper beforehand but the reality is that it’s not working properly and you even have a booking fee for each reservation so in the end it might even be more expensive. That is, if you ara able to book a seat, which we’re currently not, because we’re missing the pass cover number (which we really need because on interrail.eu I can’t reserve a seat while on travel.b-europe.com, I can - at least in theory).

Which exact train are you trying to book? (origin, destination, date, departure time)

Hi,

(for 2 persons)

Paris Montparnasse - Dax (Fr)
Saturday 16 July 2022
Departure 12:11 - Arrival 15:28

and

Bordeaux St Jean (France) - Strasbourg (France)
Saturday 30 July 2022
Departure 15:58 - Arrival 21:27

We already successfully booked out trip from Karlsruhe to Paris on 16 July .(7:32 - 10:05).

1. Booking in the app is not possible in general (what a bummer)
2. Booking on interrail.eu is not possible for these connections.
   The reason we bought Interrail is to use this specific connection (amongst another, more flexible journey with regional trains) - the Interrail pass is useless if we cannot make it for this connection, at least the first one, the journey back is more flexible as long as we arrive in Karlsruhe that day.
   We cannot cancel the pass or the reservation we already make for free so we just pay for nothing.
   The train is still available regularly through SNCF, so it is not full yet!
3. Booking via travel.b-europe.com/Eurail-GE/en/booking-tgv is not possible with a mobile pass in general, because we don’t have the Pass Cover number / passholder number or the numbers we got (“IN” + 8 digits or only the 8 digits or the 6-digit/letter pass number). The mobile pass is marketed as cool & fancy, but it basically only has disadvantages and even though it seems cheaper upfront, it is more expensive when you consider the booking fees that apply for mobile passes.
4. Booking locally at the train station is Paris (as suggested here in the FAQ) is too risky because a) we don’t have a lot of time in paris since we also need to travel across the whole city because of the weird TGV train system in Paris and b) there’s no guarantee we can reach our destination before the next day.
5. Booking “at major train stations” like said in the app is SIMPLY A LIE - we were at the train station in Karlsruhe today and after waiting for 20 minutes, the guy from the DB Reisezentrum just said it is NOT possible. It is only possible to book Karlsruhe - Paris, which we already have. Bye, next customer, please!

Can you help me please?

Why is it just so much easier (and often cheaper) to fly or drive a car? This is madness!

Best regards,
Matthias

Ok, I got help using the SNCF booking hotline: https://www.sncf.com/en/customer-service/contact-us/telephone

This was by far the easiest option (which is kind of sad but ok) and the most helpful one. I was able to reserve our seats although it cost more than the last price we were able to see on the interrail.eu website before prices were gone.

For future readers: If you can’t book via interrail.eu and it's also not possible via travel.b-europe.com (at the time of writing if you have a mobile pass, you cannot use this booking portal because you don’t have a “pass cover number”!), try to contact the booking hotline of the train operator (i.e. TGV → SNCF in France).

Overall, my first Interrail experience is a very disappointing story, before it even started! For sure an adventurous story though - as promised in the app. But not the kind of adventure I thought of ;) Spent more than 6 hours in forums, support chats, hotlines and the local main train station trying to book three train seat reservations. We need to make riding trains the easiest, cheapest and fastest solution and stop the inner-Europe car and flight madness imho. 

The problem is that some countries like France (SNCF) , Spain (Renfe), Italy(Trenitalia) stopped to sell the Interrail reservations on their own websites.
I am not a fan of these reservations but these countries always charged them for their Highspeed services to get more money from Railpassusers :/

1.) It´s always the bestway to reserve directly with the operating Railcompany where possible. Eurail just tries to provide a all from one hand solution but as many companies changed their booking systems (There was a time that you could book in Lisbon a ticket from Mardrid to Moscow :D ) but now every “European” Railcompany have a own system.

2.) The main product of Eurail are the Passes Interrail / Eurail as said above some countries charge reservations and Eurail tries to offer a solution from one hand but it´s very difficult. Especially as the Railcompanies wanna get the money directly from the travelers and not via Eurail :D

3.)
You could just ask the Customer Service or one of the Eurail supervisors here in this community to provide you with a PassCoverNumber :)

4.)  You dont have to book in Paris you could already book at any other SNCF Stations .

5.) Yeah here is already the samepoint DB use a different system as SNCF and SNCF closed their connection to the DB booking system. :/ Because of that DB Ticketoffice can only book the Thalys, ICE/TGV Germany - France & TGV/AVE Spain - France.


There are several groups and politicans that request a “european booking system” for trains and many more but they are blocked by several companies (because every company wants to use their own)

A good example how it could work is Norway (Entour is a state owned Ticket Agency that sell Trains,Ferry,Buses and some more.)

Well, as far as I know, SNCF indeed made changes in their booking system (and they may have closed an old existing interface) but DB is still free to use the remaining/new options to book domestic French tickets. DB also does that, but not for Interrail reservations. The reason for that could be that they don't find that important enough.

I tried but they wouldn’t help me, I am desperate 

I had the same problem. When trying to book TGV and Eurostar on the Interrail website it tells me in a blue box: “It looks like parts of this journey can't be booked with us even though they require reservations.” Without giving any reason as to why that is. Further down it says in red writing “Prices temporarily unavailable. Check back in a few hours to see prices and book this seat reservation.” But it always says that, not matter how long you wait and how many times you check.

I then tried booking via https://www.b-europe.com/EN/Booking/Pass#TravelWish but it didn't work because I have a mobile pass and no Pass Cover number.

Then I tried calling SNCF. When calling on 0033184943635 you get to a French computer voice giving you options. The first option I chose is was “Voyage”. The second time I chose “Billet”. The third time I chose “Loisir”. Then I got to a person who I could ask for an English-speaker and she put me through to the correct department. Then I was able to book the seat reservations for TGV, but there were none left for the train I wanted. (Why doesn't that show up on the Interrail page at least??) For Eurostar she told me to call 00443432186186. I did that but the computer voice there told me that they were unable to handle the number of calls they were receiving, asked me to call back at a different time and hung up on me.

@Kerstin 

With the newly launched Pass Cover Number generator you can get your Pass Cover Number

https://community.eurail.com/news-and-announcements-39/pass-cover-number-generator-is-live-5653

I have now written to Eurail to ask them to issue me with Pass Cover numbers for my Interrail Global Passes using this link: https://eurail.zendesk.com/hc/en-001/requests/new

The automated response e-mail tells me it could take 2 days for them to answer and gives some suggestions to common problems. One of the is:

< If the system says “No price results were found for this connection. Please try searching again or find an alternative way to book” this could mean the train is not bookable through us. Please, refer to our “Plan your trip/About reservations” section of our website for alternative ways of booking.

We also suggest you to have a look at our community platform where Eurail and Interrail users are sharing feedback/ideas and solutions. >

That isn't really very helpful at all...

Wow thanks, I will try that! It was only launched 4 hours ago. Let's see if it works.

Yes, it works, I got my Pass Cover Numbers and so was able to book reservations on b-europe for a Eurostar from Paris to London for about 30 Euros per Person. However, now I can't get any seat reservations at all to get back from London to Brussels on the date I wanted and for which I have already booked ICE connections from Brussels onwards. I'm gonna cry…

I think it's wrong that Interrail doesn't warn you before you buy your Interrail Ticket that only a small number of seats are reserved for Interrail ticket holders and that you won't be able to book seat reservations on many trains that still have plenty of seats left for other passengers - just not for Interrail customers.

And why can't you look up anywhere, before you buy your ticket, whether there are still seats for Interrail ticket holders left on the trains you want to take?

And why can't the seat reservations for TGV and Eurostar be booked on the Interrail website? It could be so easy if you didn't have to talk to SNCF in French to book tickets on the phone and if you didn't have to book tickets in English on b-europe.com but could do it all in your own mother tongue on the Interrail website. Before I tried it, I actually thought it worked that way...