HI Everyone, i need some advise as Im planning traveling to Europe starting next week. I am going to start the journey from Amsterdam to paris (by train) and from paris-london. I tried to book train from thalys website, but they do not accept any visa/mastercard/debit card out from europe. any suggestion which other website can i make the booking? is it more expensive than thalys website itself?
Another thing is, i saw http://www.eurail.com/eurail-passes/global-pass there's global pass, does this mean we can use this global pass everywhere in europe in the 15 days?

Sincerely,
Crlay

If you are only traveling from A'dam to Paris and Paris to London - a global pass won't help you since it doesn't cover the Eurostar. As for booking your tix, I haven't used the Thalys site but there have been MANY threads about it. If you do a search you'll find lots of info/suggestions.

I bought tickets in November using my AMEX card from the USA. I've heard about Thalys problems in the past, but I didn't encounter them. I have had problems with Visa fraud prevention automatically canceling an overseas transaction. You might give the provider of your credit card (bank or credit union) a call and let them know you will be using it to purchase overseas tickets. They could also let you know if your transactions were cancelled on their end vice the Thalys site. During the same trip, I also bought tickets on the Belgian Rail site and NLSpeed in the Netherlands. All with American credit cards.

How did you reach the conclusion that they don't accept cc out of Europe?

Are you traveling next week or just starting to plan next week?

If your departure is soon, I think you have very few options even if you solve the acceptance issue. I am assuming that you are traveling next week.

Any way, a common issue with using a CC is foreign transaction triggering fraud alert as mentioned above. This is your card provider specific and needs to be dealt as noted above. It is not Thalys rejecting your card, it is your bank rejecting Thalys transaction request.

Another issue is a foreign transaction Euro limit. It is not an outright rejection, but a limitation with the Euro limit per transaction or per period. If this is the case, buying fewer tickets of lesser value gets around this. However, they can get you by how much you can charge over given period. This type of restrictions are implicitly implemented. There was a thread here by someone who corresponded with the customer service to find out there was such a restriction.

A site that you could have used is http://www.voyages-sncf.com/, the French side. If you have looked up fares starting 90 days before your trip, you could have bought ~35€ NO-FLEX fare for Amsterdam-Paris which "usually" accepts your CC AND you could have printed the ticket on your printer. Thalys.com also has this capability. By purchasing deeply discounted fare, you might have come under the Euro transaction limit if this is what is blocking your transaction. The French web site path only works if you can print tickets. Picking up tickets is not an option in your case.

Presuming you are traveling to Paris soon after your arrival in Amsterdam, which is next week, you will end up buying last minutes full price tickets. How do you do this in Netherlands? Will your CC work? I don't know where you are coming from. I tried to use my US magnetic strip only CC at a train ticket counter at Schiphol last September. The ticket agent looked at my card and told me I could not use cards without CHIP and PIN, and told me to go to an ATM and come back with Euro cash to buy tickets. I happened to have enough Euro to complete the transaction at that time. Thalys + Eurostar last minutes fares would require a lot of Euro bills if you cannot use your CC. You could postpone buying Paris-London Eurostar tickets until you get to Paris. The SNCF ticket agents (humans) do take US magnetic strip only CC card. The SNCF ticket machines don't.

Although I have not done it, finding a travel agent in Netherlands might get around the CC acceptance issue.

For Paris-London, you use the http://www.eurostar.com.

seat61.com plenty of info on this
booking if you need it check there.