HELP - SNCF SITE - NICE TO GENOA - WON'T ALLOW ME TO PURCHASE
 

I am from the USA and tried to book 2 tickets from Nice to Genoa on October 14, 2005. The message I get when I tried to finalize the purcase is "closed to foreigners" or something like that. Is there any other way I can get these tickets.

Did you leave the country as "France" ..? How does it know you're a 'foreigner'..? Did you get that at the submission of your credit card info? If so, try a different credit card.

I didn't change anything and I tried again and made sure it said France. The message is "Foreign Reservations Closed". I got this when I clicked on the button - Choose this outward Journey.

ttt

topping again...

You don't need to book in advance to go from Nice to Genova. Just buy a ticket at the station before catching the train.

Perhaps it is referring to Genoa, wouldn't that be an Italian train? You are a foreigner to Italy if you are French or American. Only a foreigner would probably be booking an Italian train on a French website, I imagine.

How is it different to buy a ticket from Nice to Genoa than it is to buy one from Paris to Amsterdam...?

I do not know, but the Italian trains could have different arrangements with SNCF than the Thalys train. There may be different rules on that, and I think much of the Thalys lines are owned by SNCF. I was just speculating, but it certainly makes sense to me as there is no other way they would know Denice was a foreigner. They also could have different rules for large major international train lines than smaller ones in terms of what you can book online on the SNCF website. I know they won't allow you to book very small local runs online, either, even though they are entirely French.

I'm sure some train buff on here will know, I just was trying to avoid the spreading of rampant rumors as sometimes happens on here, if it isn't because SNCF knows Denice is not French.

on the other hand, Denice might explain at what point she got that message and what she was really trying to do to get tickets. I just got a quote on SNCF for that route with no problem and no message like that -- up to the point where you need to enter a credit card number, of course.

I think they can tell CC numbers by country, but I was not asking them to mail any tickets to the US, either, nor was I trying to only make a reservation, but to prepay. I did not fill in any address in the boxes, either, just a name, email address, and said I would pick up in France.

I did my normal thing. I purchased tickets from CDG to AVIGNON about 1 month ago and had no problem. When I clicked on "choose this outward journey" the next messge I get is "Foreign Reservations Closed". I am going to try it again today. Maybe there was just some snafuu with the system.

The reason is that the destination is in Italy and for whatever reason, does not allow purchase for out of country cities. In May, I booked Genoa to Monaco and could not pre-purchase either. It was fine as there was no problem buying the ticket from the Genoa train station ticket office the day of travel. I would advise you to do the same at the Nice end of your trip.

I tried again and I get the same message. I guess we will just wing it and hope we can get on the train from Nice to Genoa and then switch to a local to Manarola.

Thanks everyone.