I’m afraid so; there are some trains which do charge more for a first class reservation.

Which trains are you looking into reserving where this applies, if you don’t mind my asking?

If you chose a 2nd class seat reservation then that is where your seat will be.

Most companies have the same reservation cost or a small difference, what exactly are you looking at reserving?

Geneva to Paris is one of them and the 1st class reservations for 2 are like 120 euros.  We could almost fly for that price! 2nd class is 60 but still not right when we already paid over 800 for passes

Ok, that’s a TGV Lyria service - they charge the singular most ridiculous passholder reservation fees of any transport brand on the continent.

However…

Use these trains for a domestic journey within France and the normal TGV fee applies, which is €10 in both 1st and 2nd class when booked far enough in advance. You can book to Bellegarde, which is less than 40km from Geneva, then simply hop on a regular no-reservation local train for the final stretch over the border.

EDIT: or indeed do the reverse of what I just said; I wasn’t paying attention to the direction you were travelling!

What are the other bookings you’d like looked at?

… Just typing basically the same thing as @EdM when his post popped up.

TGV Lyria is a complete joke for passholders, avoid it as he suggested.

BelleGarde is near Marseille ?  My trip is actually from Montreaux in Switzerland to Paris ?  Can you give me a better route ?

This Bellegarde (sur-Valserine, Ain): https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/46.1103/5.8291&layers=T

There are other Bellegardes, but I don’t *think* they have stations

GOT IT!!!  sorry .. so the train from Bellegarde to Paris is still high speed but the seat reservations cost 45 euros instead of 125 .!!  Wow thanks very much Ed .. saved me some money there …  Other trip would be eurostar to london a few days after paris but no savings to be had there.  All my trips in the UK and Germany are no reservation needed so good there too .. Thanks !!

No reservation needed, but even so, don’t forget that once you arrive here in the UK they are free to make at any station with a manned ticket counter! Anyway, glad to have been of some use and do have a good one :-)

BG is in fact the frist stop just in FR, over border, on the Gnv->P trains. There are local small ´commuter tram/trains´ Gnv-Bg that run very frequently-use these as means to reach it-will extend total journey time some 30 mins. TGV IN FR cost 10€ extra if you are so lucky to get in the small quota for passholders, or 20 if not. The app via the site charges 2€ extra for any RES made via it.

Just a bit of advice for Germany. If you check how busy some ICE trains are it is worth the few euros reservation fee

 We  travelled on ICE from Frankfurt to Brussels yesterday for a Eurostar and there were no seats for unreserved passengers and it was diverted so 1.5 hours delay with many standing.