SNCF sees the light
 

HOORAY! FELICITATIONS! France's train operator has finally responded to long-standing and justified criticism of its bullying sales site. A redesign has eliminated the automatic bump that pushed North American customers towards its related RailEurope agency. I ran a test reservation all the way to the point of payment without having to specify my country. The opening page is cleaner and easier to use. The "direct trains" function can be turned off right at the top of the reservations page to allow for more choices. Finding the Charles de Gaulle airport station is easier too. Options for the company's evolving bus service are clear.
Without actually buying something I can't evaluate the methods of ticket delivery. Even so, SNCF has made a giant step forward in customer service. Merci!
http://en.voyages-sncf.com/en/

It most certainly was not "automatic", as I use it a lot and have never once been "bumped" to Raileurope. That only happened for people who claimed they wanted to pick up their tickets in North America or something like that. It has never once happened to me and I'm in the US.

It was automatic in that as soon as you clicked the UK flag for English, as you would with any other site, you ended up on uk.voyages-sncf, the former Rail Europe UK.

You had to click 'Other countries (EUR)' to stay on the proper SNCF site but in English. Then it asked your country again, and you couldn't select Great Britain or United States as selecting either meant the search results opened on uk.voyages-sncf or raileurope.com.

You had to select 'Afghanistan' to stay with it! I have parodied this often enough in presentations to train operators, perhaps it finally got through!

Or perhaps SNCF have realised that all their overseas business is now going to rival retailer www.captaintrain.com which sells French train tickets at the same prices but easier and with no such shenanigans!

I do hope they don't restore the annoying redirects - their overseas subsidiaries put pressure on them to protect their business.

The more important question is: will they still reject so many non-European credit cards? I've been able to buy tickets from the SNCF site twice but the second time, the credit card I tried to use was rejected; by the time I got around to trying a second card, the Prem fare I was trying to buy was gone. That cost me about 30 Euros.

Yes, the credit card issue is the important one. I've never had a problem using the French SNCF site - never tried the English one.

Some time ago I began using www.sncf.com (no voyages...etc.). That site never asked about country. I use the site in French, but you can choose English or German and proceed with a reservation. I recently used it to buy TER tickets from Paris to Beauvais using the Découverte Senior fare with the option to print the tickets in the station in Paris. No problem with using my US Capital One card to purchase the tickets online. However... The ticket machines at Gare du Nord (I tried two of them) wouldn't print the tickets when the same card was used. Had to go to the ticket counter. The agent there simply shrugged and said that the machines often did that with foreign cards. So still some issues with using some credit cards for SNCF transactions.

I don't see the point of using the "print the tickets in the station" option unless you don't have access to a printer. I'd rather print the ticket myself and have it with me and not rely on needing the right card to print it later, etc.

The print at home option wasn't offered for that train.

Good to hear this. I followed Man in Seat61 directions and never had trouble with the site. Also never had credit card issues either.

ttt

Using foreign credit cards with the SNCF site has always been difficult, even if you were able to book the tickets. However, once I listed my Visa card with <i>Verified by Visa</i>, use <i>Securecode</i> for Mastercard, acceptance problems stopped.

Securecode
http://www.mastercard.us/securecode.html

Verified by Visa
https://verified.visa.com/aam/activa...andingPage.aam

CapitaineTrain is so easy to use I don't even try the SNCF site any more.