I'm about to purchase train tickets from Montreux to Paris (via Geneva).
A couple years ago I remember in France, only the PREMS could be printed at home. Has that changed so now ALL tickets, whether PREM or not can be printed at home?
Thanks in advance!
TGV/Lyria -- Self-Print All Tickets?
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Well, I got no replies and figured it out myself after navigating a maze, getting misinformation, and finally doing the online chat with SNCF.
Because this deals with both France and Switzerland and I actually learned something useful, I will pass on the results.
To answer my question first, no, not all tickets can be printed at home. Looks like it's still only the PREMS and IdTGV tickets that can be home printed.
If you are dealing only with France, or France & Luxembourg, you have a couple of options -- picking up your tickets using the credit card you purchased them with, but you must have a pin number, at train stations or designated places that allow you to pick up your tickets. Otherwise, they are mailed, free of charge, to a place in Europe (they will NOT mail to the USA -- you're then stuck with paying a surcharge because you have to go through RailEurope). It's all explained on the Voyages-SNCF website.
Now I had first tried using the Swiss website, and their train website is a real pain in the neck, and plus their charges are actually higher than the French train website. Plus, they don't show all the time options that the SNCF website has.
If traveling from Switzerland to France, you'll probably be using the TGV Lyria, which I believe is the Swiss French partnership, a nice classy train!
There's usually a choice of trains from Montreux to Paris, going either via Geneva or Lausanne. But because this year they are doing a lot of work on the line from Lausanne to Paris, they all seem to be diverted through Geneva.
Supposedly with some of their products, like Piccolo (which I gather is like the PREMS, but the Swiss version), you should be able to print those online. Maybe if I had discovered the www.tgv-lyria.com website, I might have been able to do that. But I didn't, and on the SNCF (actually you get transferred to the TGV website to purchase) that was not an option. So I ended up having the tickets sent to the hotel where we'll be staying in Switzerland, and confirmed that they would put them in their safe when they were received.