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May I have your help to purchase seat reservations on the following trains for my party of 6 Travelers?:

 

June 27 TGV 8541 TGV INOUI

Departing 12:11 PM PARIS MONTPARNASSE 1 ET 2 

Arriving 2:17 PM BORDEAUX ST JEAN 

 

June 30 TGV 8504 TGV INOUI

Departing 10:46 AM BORDEAUX ST JEAN

Arriving 12:54 PM PARIS MONTPARNASSE 1 ET 2

 

Currently, Eurail.com errs when attempting to Book these reservations online... "Please try to find an alternate connection.  The unavailable leg will be removed from your cart."  But, as far as I know, there is no other way to purchase these seat reservations.  Sncf-connect.com does not provide an option to purchase a seat reservation; only a ticket.

I've already purchased seat reservations for the legs of our journey before and after the trains shown above (from London before and after Paris to Munich).  So, travel at other times is not preferable.  Nonetheless, I've experimented with booking seat reservations on other trains between Paris and Bordeaux; all fail with the same error.  I believe there is a general failure of the connectivity between Eurail.com and the French railway ticketing systems.

Please reply as promptly as possible.  You've insisted on corresponding via Email, since no phone number or online chat is available. May I have your help to expedite a resolution of this problem quickly?

You're writing to a community of other Eurail and Interrail users, so please think about your tone. Customer service can be reached here.

I've just tried these trains on eurail.com and could get to the payment page with 4 passengers but not with 6 (also tried both legs separately). I Assumed 2nd class.

Domestic TGV reservations can also be made this way:

  • Belgian railways website (pass cover numbers needed; if you have a mobile pass, request them from customer service). On this website, you can buy these reservations as 1 return journey and save on the booking fee (4€ per order; Eurail want 2€ per seat and train). I can get to the payment page here with 6 passengers, for 124€ in total.
  • French railways phone service (+33 1 84 94 3635, press #85 for English)
  • Belgian railways phone service

Thank you very much for your help.  Using the 4/2 method you described, I was able to purchase the reservations on eurail.com.  

To make the 4/2 purchases, I split my Travelers into separate Trips.  Having done that, is there a way to Merge those Trips? Is there a better way to implement the 4/2 method?

What is meant by “Please ask questions in the forum and not via a private message.”?  As far as I know, I didn’t request that this conversation be private; I just clicked ‘Create a Topic’.  And this Topic currently has 16 Views.  Of course, it would be helpful for others to know that SCNF / TGV INOUI does not accept requests for reservations in parties of more than 4.

To make the 4/2 purchases, I split my Travelers into separate Trips.  Having done that, is there a way to Merge those Trips? Is there a better way to implement the 4/2 method?

You could have one trip with all 6 and one trip with just 2 people, so you can try 6 and if that doesn't work, unselect 2 and split the booking. I don't know if this issue also pops up when booking other operators via Eurail. I reported it to Eurail, so I suppose they will be looking at it.

What is meant by “Please ask questions in the forum and not via a private message.”?

That's just my standard signature, to prevent being flooded by private messages.

Of course, it would be helpful for others to know that SCNF / TGV INOUI does not accept requests for reservations in parties of more than 4.

I'm not sure it's their fault. I was able to get to the payment page via the Belgian railways website with 6 passengers, so it could also be a bug on the Eurail side (or on both Eurail and SNCF).

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