Hope things work out! Cheers

Melly - good to hear you've sorted it out with RE Aust. After they'd fixed up my first booking (by couriering a hard copy ticket at no extra charge) my other (e ticket) bookings with them went through without a hitch. It's useful having the 'local' email contact, but it's not good that the same problems are still occurring with the RE Aust site.

BTW when letting your credit card provider know of the dates and countries of your intended travel also think whether you need to tell them you will be using your cc before you travel to book and/ or prepay significant amounts for overseas services such as accommodation. I had informed mine of my travel plans, but when I used my cc to prepay a great accommodation deal (admittedly for a not insignificant $1750!) my cc provider's fraud section was on to me like a flash - very comforting to know the system works, but would have been a shame if I'd been uncontactable and the 48 hour deal had slipped.

Good luck.

We received our RailEurope tickets via courier on Friday 20th! So happy to have them (finally)! Not long to go till we start our adventures!

Thanks fellow Fodorites for all of your help

I suspect Rail Europe are engaging in a number of dodgy practices. I booked with them recently and my first attempt failed (though they still billed my card). My second attempt made after numerous calls to try to contact them and get the first one cancelled, worked. However, the price had magically increased about 10% between tries. That might make sense except that checking the SNCF website showed that the same train tickets were available there for about $30 cheaper. So we are paying for the convenience of using their website - they have more or less zero customer service and I suspect they are practising bait and switch pricing where your initial attempt at purchase fails and then the price strangely increases with further attempts. That they are adding about 15 to 30% to the price on SNCF tickets but apparently can't afford either a landline or someone to answer calls is scandalous.

RailEurope have the most expensive tickets. You're paying for the convenience of buying all your European tickets from one place. You're lucky that you only paid $30 more. Did you get a seat reservation? If not you'll pay more for that too.

If seat reservations are required then they are included in the price of a Rail Europe ticket - wow how people like to malign Rail Europe at any cost and do not care that what they are saying is simply misinformation.

Rail Europe BTW is largely owned by the SNCF so the ire should be towards the SNCF who, along with the Swiss Railways, owns Rail Europe. Rail Europe is a SNCF subsidiary.