RENFE errors (Please help me with the trains.)
 

Hello. I've been trying to book a train ticket from Madrid to Seville on RENFE. I've tried multiples times now with multiple cards. It appears one transaction went through, but Chase declined it as fraud. None of the others have gone through. I get an error message: "Error G0001. The process cannot proceed at this time." It appears to be WAY more expensive to buy at the train station than to book the web fares online beforehand. Does anyone know what the problem is? Or have any other avenues. Please help. Thank you!

You can use a US agent for Renfe.

http://petrabax.com/renfe/

You will pay about 20% premium over Renfe. You buy in dollars without any foreign exchange. I think they are NY based.

They offer all the Renfe discounts. 20% premium on deep web discount is still significantly better than the high last minutes fare with a long queue to go with it.

Renfe = I think the best one is -60% web discount = 40% fare
Petrabax = 40% * 1.2 = 48% = -52% discount even with premium.

I just did this and the tickets printed out like a charm.

I tried 5 times using different cards at Renfe. It had nothing to do with my bank's fraud monitoring. The banks noted that the Renfe did not even try to charge my cc.

Did you contact your bank so they would not put a stop on the transactions? This could be the issue. I'd contact your credit card issuer and let them know you are trying to purchase these tickets.

If you still have trouble after contacting your bank try a diffrent time of the day. If it's the middle of the night in Spain sometimes I've experienced issues.

I was able to purchase 2 tickets this week with my Citibank issued card - but have never been able to use my Capital One card....

I've also attached a step by step guide posted on TripAdvisor on how to purchase tickets.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g1...s.Online..html

Error G0001 - is a card payment problem.

I am sorry, this is a regular query - as briefly as possible.

1. Advise your finance house you will be making the purchase.
2. If this is a VISA card sign up for Verified by Visa or if Mastercard sign up for Securecode.
3. Try an ATM/Debit card.

Read and especially if all fails - (I have no idea whether Chase is compatible) - read point 49 here - http://tiny.cc/5ynb6http://tiny.cc/5ynb6

You will pay about 20% premium over Renfe. You buy in dollars without any foreign exchange. I think they are NY based.>

Raileurope US then is better as now they tap right into the Renfe.com system and book at exact same fares as online but do charge a $7 fee per ticket so it is $7 more not 20% - most long-distance trains would thus be cheaper thru RailEurope it seems. www.seat61.com has info on this and that is where I learned of this development.

Yay! They finally went through this morning! Thank you, Fodorites! Your help is much appreciated.

I am not sure if this is what made a difference but - I tried over and over to buy tickets and kept getting the same error message. I called my credit card and they said that it was now authorized but I still had the same problem. I had been trying to buy the tickets while logged in to Renfe so I decided to log out and try again. Well that time it worked. I don't know if the authorization finally went through or if it was the fact that I was logged out but I thought I'd offer it as another possible solution.

Again RailEurope now sells Renfe tickets generally at the exact same price as on renfe.com with just a $7 surcharge - rather than spending frustrating hours online and not being sure your order has gone thru - calling your credit card company, etc why not just use RailEurope and be sure and you charge will also be in dollars so no transaction fee like many c cards charge a 3% for foreign transactions.