Well this post has been going on for a year now and there are just as many confused travellers wanting to use Trentitalia....including me. Used all my Credit Cards....all my helpful Bank Managers and all my intellect...but everything failed . So now I have decided not to go to Vienna from Venice but fly off to Prague instead. hope Wizz Air does not fail me!!!. But one last hurrah for Trentitalia...in the space of just 24 hours, I got 2 phone calls from their Helpline, 2 wonderfully polite agents, full of humour and speaking perfect English, giving me different options to buy tickets...the easiest is to pay full fare and buy a ticket at an Italian station. Thank you..thank you...thank you..

I wouldn't pay full fare at a station. A full fare ticket (flexi) is more expensive (20% higher priced than a standard ticket) as it lets you make changes similar to full fare airline tickets. I would attempt to buy upon arrival and get Amica fares. If not available, you should select standard fare.

Has anyone tried calling overseas to see if they would take your credit card over the phone?

I looked at the Posto Click thing. They give you 24 hours to confirm the reservation though.

Yeah they would have to let you buy Amica fares over the phone or else might as well chance waiting until you get to Italy.

Can you buy at Tourist offices or do you have to go to the Termini?

You can buy at travel agencies with the Trenitalia logo in the window. You can buy train tickets for anywhere in Italy at ANY train station from clerks at tickets windows or from automatic machines that have English options.

Are there any near Navona/Pantheon area?

anyone try purchasing rail tickets thru Travelocity?

Travelocity just rolls over to Raileurope which marks the price up and adds a mailing fee. Buy them in Italy.

Michael T, thank you so much for your thoughtful post. My fiance and I are traveling to Italy on Oct 4, 2009. We're first staying in Ravello, then to Rome from there. I needed to buy train tickets from Salerno to Rome ahead of time because not only does the hotel in Ravello need to know when to schedule a time to drive us to the train station in Salerno, but the B&B in Rome needed to know what time we would be arriving. I didn't want to wing it and hope we'd get the train times we wanted AFTER we got there.

Anyway, I tried to order the tickets on the TrenItalia.it site and it kept denying my credit card. I tried over and over thinking I mistyped something, then got locked out. I called my bank to be sure I was entering my name exactly as the bank had it, etc. and they said everything looked fine. I made a new account on the TrenItalia site and tried again but no luck. I then decided to call them by phone and order that way. When the lady on the phone tried to put my card through, it wouldn't work even for her. She then explained that their system would not recognize a number of American credit cards for one reason or another. She said my only options were to buy the tickets at the station once I got to Italy, or try to find an American travel agency that could book them for me. Mind you I was about to blow a gasket at this point out of sheer frustration. While I was searching the internet for an agency to do this, I came across your post. It somehow made me feel better that I was not alone in my angst, lol!

As I read through all the replies to your post, I stopped on
acswift's answer and thought it sounded like a great idea to go through PayPal and get a single use MasterCard number through them as I already have a PayPal account linked to my bank account. So I went to PayPal and downloaded the plugin I needed (used the link he provided), set everything all up, and got my single use MasterCard number. I went to the TrenItalia site and started all over again and everything went through like a charm!! I was so very happy!!!

Not only did I want to share this with everyone, but I wanted to thank you for taking the time to write your article, and I wanted to thank acswift for posting his excellent idea!

stargazer - Glad Paypal worked for you. Many people worry too much about tickets in Italy, but it's good to know Paypal will work. I think you will find when you get on the train (if it's AV or ES) to Rome that it's half empty. That's been my experience, even in high season, except for commuter trains. Were you able to get the Super 60% discount?

I'm not sure what the total discount was but it was a lot cheaper than booking on RailEurope or Eurostar. We got two 2nd class tickets on the Eurostar train (no train changes) from Salerno to Rome for 33,30 EU each (total 66,60). The hotel's transfer service wanted to charge 480 EU for the trip to Rome so that looked like a great deal to us as it was.

By the way, do you know if the train station is safe to wait around in at Salerno, I read some things that said the surrounding area is considered the worst area in all of Italy. That made us a little nervous.

The area around the station in Salerno is just fine for being dropped off by a cab.

The price you paid is 33,30 EU is EXACTLY the fare you would have paid if you had booked at the station, today.

I know I am in the minority and that folks really like to book ahead, but for those who don't want to fuss with PayPal or any other time-consuming system, it still works if you get to the station and just go to the self-service kiosk.

Doesn't the Amica fares expire if you wait too long?

In my case, I saw low fares for Rome to Naples and back but I waited to buy until just the day before travel and it was somewhat more, somewhere between 5-7 Euro more.

So I went ahead and bought the return at the same time.

Amica is an "as-available" fare, like getting frequent flyer tickets. There are a limited number of Amica seats availble on a particular train and they are ionly sold until midnight of the day before departure.

>>>The price you paid is 33,30 EU is EXACTLY the fare you would have paid if you had booked at the station, today. <<<

I believe the online fares are at a 5% discount so you will pay just a bit more at the station over buying online. The other discount fares range from 60% off (30 day advance purchase), 30% (15 days), 15% (7 days) or Amica 20% off (24 hour advance purchase).
http://www.trenitalia.com/cms/v/inde...003f16f90aRCRD

I, too, received a message saying my credit card was denied. Luckily, because I read these post, I knew there was a chance that the credit card purchase actually went through. I waited until the next morning to check my credit card purchases on line, and sure enough the 2 train purchases had gone through, even though the web site had said my credit card was denied.

But do you have the print out with the code for your tickets so you can board the train?

Tried to buy ticket with MC via Firefox and using my full name when asked for Credit Card Holder.
Name: Joe
Surname: Bloggs
..... credit card denied!

Then tried Internet Explorer. And it worked. Apparently you need to enter the name exactly the same as on your credit card, skipping the titles (Mr, Ms etc)
Name: J
Surname: Bloggs
..... then the usual stuff through Visa Verisign security check pop-up (for those who registed with it) and the confirmation page where you can save or print off the tickets in .pdf format.

Good luck!

One thing to note about tickets purchased through the trenitalia web site (but this was in 2007!): It is more difficult to change the train if you purchased through the web. I tried to change to a different train on a Florence to Rome ticket because my train was delayed and there were many available before it. The ticket office could not help me as it was a web ticket. They told me to phone as I didn't have any internet access. However, the toll free number they gave me was unreachable from a cell phone (with an Italian phone number) and from the payphones. I had no trouble changing the tickets I had purchased in person in Italy when a similar situation occurred going Venice to Florence by train.

Well, I've registered, reset my password, logged out & back in, found my itinerary, selected it to purchase, and even if I enter a date 4 days prior to my planned travel date (i.e., < 7 days), I get the flag that it is not available for purchase. My itinerary is from Rome, Italy to Hyeres, France...so are international tickets the problem? The itinerary is there, with times & connections, but I still cannot purchase it. So, I haven't even encountered the failed credit card yet :) Thanks for all the great info, even though I am not quite there yet.

Michael T did a great job laying it all out for train travelers. I check schedules on the Trenitalia website but I've never tried to purchase tickets online. I rarely know what train I want to take until a day or two before I have to take a train.

I got over my need-to-do-everything-in-advance obsession ages ago. For me, obsessive behavior is much more stressful than dealing with the on-site kiosks. There is a video online somewhere that shows how to deal with the English version of the Italian ticket machines. Unfortunately, the English ticket-purchase software is not as easy or intuitive as an American ATM machine but the learning curve is minor. I've never had to wait for a machine.

It is a shame that the Trenitalia website is so challenging. From a software perspective, it may be difficult to write e-commerce code to accommodate large numbers of international transactions. I can't think of another online product that has the international demand that Trenitalia must have. Even so, there has to be a better way to provide service. Italians are notoriously slow to change. And their attitudes toward customer service often need a kick in the butt.