We received the following reply this morning on the recurring problems of buying tickets online with a foreign credit card:

"You have to know we are having some troubles with some foreign credit and debit cards payments on Venta On Line (www.renfe.es), where normally you can make purchases. We apologize, but there is an error produced when Renfe’s server try to connect with some of the overseas Bank’s servers. If that happen, please try your purchase in a train station.

Also, you can try to get a reservation 72 hours before the trip date calling to +34 902 320 320. That reservation is going to be paid at the train station, where there is no problem to make purchases with foreign credit cards.

If you have a Spanish credit card or an American Express, you can buy the ticket by calling +34 902 320 320,

We are so sorry for the inconveniences, and we are working to solve it."

Thanks for posting this.

<i>We are so sorry for the inconveniences, and we are working to solve it.</i>

ahem... haven't they been "working to solve" this problem for several years now?

now they take amex?

Hi Lin,
sometimes they take it, sometimes they don´t take it. I have two Visas (one normal, one gold) and one Amex, all of them spanish-issued ones. The only card I don´t have problems is the normal Visa, the two others ...

And there is no longer an issue between IE or Firefox ... sometimes it works fine in IE, sometimes it works fine with Firefox.

I loved it when they told Robert that you could buy 72 hours before ... so ... forget about Web or Estrella fares ...

And then ... they wonder that people prefer buses or flying ... Iberia works better for me when thinking of a weekend with the family ...

Bye, Cova

as I posted before, I had no problem getting Web fare with
MC. If I had to buy the same ticket without a discount, I would have gotten a ticket on Vueling for much less than
the full train fare.