I will be buying my train ticket Paris to Amsterdam on the TGV website (suggested by most of you), but I am confused as to whether to use the 'Ticketless' of ' Printed Ticket' option to collect my ticket. They seem very similar, in that I print either/both of them off at my leasure. Is this correct? I will be printing them off in Australia. I would hate to choose one only to find it was the wrong option. Thanks for your help.

Hi Springback

I'm not sure I really understand your question, but when I've booked TGV tickets on line from here in Australia, there is the option of print at home tickets for Prems prices; but for other full fare tickets I have picked them up at the station prior to travel.

As I understand it, you can print a prems ticket because it is non-refundable. If they let you print the full price ticket at home, you could (if you had no scruples) print off multiple copies then go and get refunds from multiple ticket offices.

I expect you've looked at www.seat61.com . . . he usually has the answers to most questions, or will respond to an email from you.

I've never had a problem with either print-at-home or tickets collected at the station.
Hope this helps, Di

When I've booked on TGV, I've gone ticketless and printed them off at the station 15 minutes before I board. I just prefer it this way because I don't have to worry about losing the ticket on the way.

Be very careful about waiting too long to get your pre paid tickets at the station. Sometimes the lines can be longer than anticipated and you can miss the train waiting to get your tickets.

Either PREM or iDTGV tickets are self printed for exactly the reasons di2315 points out. If you lose one, print another.

I don't use that website, I use the basic SNCF one in French, but they seem similar in that you can print both. It is kind of odd, I think they only have those two similar options on trains to Netherlands, not within France.

It appears the one difference is the eticket or ticketless option literally means you don't even have to print it if you have a Thalys card that must be an account where you can look it up. If you don't have one, it sounds like both are similar in that you must print them yourself.

Yes, the SNCF is coming up with new credit card style chip cards that make it unnecessary to ever print a ticket -- all of the information is automatically stored in the card. However, from what I could gather, this is aimed only at regular users and I think the brochure started "if you take more than 20 trips a year..."

I usually print my tickets at home beforehand, but the other day I decided to choose the "collect from machine" option. A few days later, I just inserted my card into an SNCF machine and it printed the ticket. I did not even have to give a reference number.

Thanks everyone. Looks like it really is not an issue. I'll print at home knowing that if I loose it (I believe I won't!!)I'll be able to re-print it.

Things change all the time, but I've always e-mailed the pdf files for my tickets to myself. If you're traveling with a laptop, you can copy the files to a flash drive and take that to a shop that makes copies to print for you, or go to an internet cafe (if you can find one) if you won't have access to a printer. If you're staying in a hotel, you can forward the e-mail to them and they'll print the tickets for you. I worry that the tickets could get wet or something (inkjet ink smears) and the bar codes compromised...along with the possibility of losing/misplacing them.