UNCBB113

Correction: I have now been able to find tickets on TrenItalia (don't know what I was doing wrong before) BUT they are about 15E apiece more (70E v. 55E) than on SNCF... so same issue still, would prefer to find a way to buy them from SNCF.

MorganB

1) Yes they will mail them. I have also read they will send a link to you if it is a Prem or iDTGV ticket.

2) Who knows. Not a question a would fret about. Just be happy about the savings.

3) I would suspect they will mail these as well. Just call and ask.

CRose10328

Wow, what a great service you provided.

Does the Thalys webpage work basically the same? I'm looking for a ticket from Cologne, Germany to Paris, a SMLY or something I think they're called. I'm told you have to buy a roundtrip but you can throw away the return and it's significantly cheaper than all others. As long as I can print them at home am I okay to book them through the Thalys.com webpage? The Eurorail person in the US I was working with volunteered to book for me but I'm not sure if he will charge extra for that.

Also any idea how long in advance of your departure time I would need to get to the Cologne station? I'm not sure how huge that station is.

Thanks.

MorganB

Hi there Crose,

Yes you can toss the return without a problem. As long as you can print your tickets you are good and should book on thalys.com for the savings. I have used the site only a few times but after you get off the main page the booking pages appear to be identical to those of the SNCF. In fact you can also book your Thalys tickets through the SNCF website.

Raileurope will happily book your ticket for a premium. There is the extremely rare case where their prices are lower (eurostar comes to mind). You might want to compare but it is doubtful that they will be less.

Cant help with the station in cologne, never been there.

Happy travels!

CRose10328

MorganB, thanks for your help. Can you see any advantage to booking through the SNCF site versus Thalys or vice versa? Reading through your instructions it appears that they are very similar.

You've done a great service for a lot of people.

MorganB

Glad to be of help. I dont think theres really a difference between the two sites as long as you can print your tickets.

ls608

Hi everyone. I have two probably dumb questions- first, what does PREMS mean? Can anyone buy these tickets? Also, do the tickets stay the same price or do they get more expensive closer to the date of travel (like airline tickets)? I would like to go from Paris to Charleville-Mezieres at March 31/April 1st for 'Criterium International', a big bike race, but I'd like to wait a while to book until my plans are really set. Thanks for the info!

nancy1652

MorganB: Thanks so much for all your good information. However, I still have a question. We are traveling from Paris Nord to Brussels, but we want to return from Brussels Midi to CDG in Paris. I can't seem to find a way to do this. Can you help? Many thanks.

MorganB

Hi LS, anyone can book PREMS. They are advanced purchase discount fares. Currently there are some for 15 euros on your route. The sooner you book the better for getting the cheapest prems. You must book at least two weeks in advance to get a good deal on prems. Between 2 and 1 week they are also available but more pricey. 1 week out Prems are no longer available.

MorganB

Hi Nancy, there are 5 trains a day from brussels midi to CDG. Here are the times:

07:55 10:46 12:58 16:25 20:36

On tuesdays the 10:46 is moved to 10:28.

If you are booking online you can book two one way tickets. If the fare you are trying to get requires a round trip you will have to book by phone. I know with the TGV they allow you to depart from any station in the Ile de France and return to any Ile de France station. I am not sure if that is the same with Thalys but worth a call.

nancy1652

Thank you SO much, MorganB. What a wonderful help you are. If they gave out Oscars for the best Fodorites, you'd be be at the top of the list!

Nancy

agcity

"ditto" from me as well, Nancy!

Merv

MorganB

Your most welcome Nancy. Thanks for the compliment. You too agcity.

agcity

Bingo! Aix-en-Provence to Gare-de-Lyon for 4. Not bad for a simple Kiwi.

Thanks again MorganB.

Merv

WillTravel

I purchased Cologne-Paris tickets for our shortly upcoming trip, and I printed them out. The top part of the page is the ticket, and the lower part is the conditions (in French).

So just to clarify, I do not need to validate this page of paper? I just show it to the conductor, and he/she compares it to the birthdate and name on my passport?

Sue_xx_yy

Cautionary note: I put in my credit card details, clicked on "confirm and pay for your order" ....and the next screen said, "Due to a time-out, your request has failed."

Not quite. I went to the email account that I gave as a contact, and lo! there was the confirmation email, and most important of all, a link to my dossier which once clicked on, showed that my transaction HAD gone through; I was then able to print out the tickets.

I strongly suspect that had I taken sncf at their initial word that the request had failed, and gone and re-performed the transaction, my CC would now be showing a bill for duplicate tickets!

Moral of story: always check your email in between attempts.

Thank you MorganB, for your tremendous work here.

MorganB

WillTravel,

Home printed tickets need no validation usually. I have never boarded in germany so I dont really know how they handle the printed tickets but I would assume no validation since the printed tickets are only good for the date and time of travel and cannot be changed.

Sue: You make a very good point. Glad you caught the error! Thanks for the compliment. Have a nice trip.

suec1

Well this is more of a website problem - several years ago I set up an account / log-in on the SNCF website - I still get promos (put in my SPAM folder) to the email address I used. Now I am going back to France and want to purchase tickets and of course do not remember my log in. When I try to get them to resend my password it tells me "Not a valid email address" (but they are sending me promos!)I tried creat a new account but it did not seem to "take", then I got an email in my SPAM folder from PAYPAL saying my info had changed - I think these must be connected since it was just after trying to log in / create new account but why would the SNCF be directly linked to Paypal? Are you confused? I am frustrated! Any suggestions?

MorganB

SNCF doesnt have anything to do with Paypal so that was just a random event. If you are having so much trouble registering, you can simply book without registering.

Sue_xx_yy

suec1 - I will leave it to "the master" to answer your question but I was able to buy and print out tix without creating an account at all. Are you sure you have to use your pre-existing account or create a new one?

*****

MorganB, I've been examining our tix, checking to make sure they printed out correctly. I read the page "les points a verifier sur votre billet imprime"

http://tinyurl.com/37dyae

and as far as I can tell, all 4 conditions have been satisfied. But, when I printed out the page, no barcodes appeared on the specimen ticket. Plus:

I checked the QandA on printing at this link:

http://tinyurl.com/39kezg

Scroll down to 2 - "Quelles sont les conditions d'utilisation du Billet Imprimé® ? " and there you find facsimiles of how the printout is supposed to look.

Our format looks like the second ticket displayed, the "igTGV" ticket, except that no igTGV symbol appears (as far as I know, we didn't buy igTGV tickets, just Prem tickets for an ordinary TGV Paris-Arras) and more to the point, no bar codes appear anywhere on our ticket- just scrambled boxes of the type appearing in the first ticket.

Is this normal, i.e. are my tickets valid without visible bar codes, or is my computer/browser somehow blocking the printing of these codes (I used Mozilla Firefox as the browser)?