Problems With Booking Train Tickets on SNCF.COM
 

Please help me. I have been trying to book tickets from Paris to Bourg en Bresse on http://www.sncf.com. I fill in the form concerning the travel : stations (PARIS and BOURG EN BRESSE), dates (November 5th and returning the 7th to Paris), etc. I clicked on "Express reservation at the best price", and also tried "Advanced Search". It comes back with the same page every time. I get no results. I have done this 100 times and contacted sncf by e-mail. They replied that they had no problems when they entered in the information and suggested I delete my internet temporary files. I did and it still didn't work. Has anyone else had this problem with their web site? Raileurope was over $200 more so I don't want to go that route. Is there a number to call sncf directly from the US to book tickets and pick them up at the train station in France?

Try entering those dates and hit "search timetables" then select the time you want to travel. When I did it, I got 108.40 Euro round trip. Maybe the "Express reservation" feature is the problem...I never use it when booking tickets.

I just plugged in your dates and random times (10 am in both cases) and got a RT made up of two PREMs fares that totaled 83.90 euros. Forget the Express reservatio"n" option - the site will bring up all the possible fares anyway. Bonne chance!

Hi French,

I tried it with your dates. The 7th is a Sunday, and I got an error message. Changing the return to Monday yielded a 60E RT.

Sometimes the site just has glitches. Keep trying.

I don't normally choose the Express thing either, but out of curiosity, I just did exactly what I suppose you did -- chose Express Reservation, on the English page, with your dates, and I got lots of choices with no problems, including on the return date.

I got a special fare of 90 euro RT, 2nd class, which is called a "Discovery Fare" -- it requires a Sat night stay.

Frenchtwist,
Be sure when you enter your dates that you do it in the European form of day/month/year--not the U.S. form of month/day/year. If you use the U.S. format you will be asking for reservations on May 11 and July 11 and that is why you keep getting no results (too late for this year and too early for next year). I made this mistake the first time I tried to book tickets on SNCF and it took me a long time to figure out the problem.

Thanks everyone for your help! Because you guys could get results when you searched the dates, I knew it must be a problem with my computer (maybe my firewall was blocking that site or something). I went to the public library and pulled it up with no problems at all and booked the tickets. It was driving me crazy. Merci beaucoup!

Hi F.

Good thinking.