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Refund of Obb Ticket from Prague to Vienna

Posted by (Canada) on

Hello: In error, I purchased the wrong train ticket with OBB for travel from Prague to Vienna. I purchased a ticket for travel in the future - April 2016. I purchased a standardpreis international online ticket and printed the pdf ticket before I realized I had purchased this 'fully flexible' and expensive ticket instead of a reduced rate ticket for a particular day/train.

From the research I have done, it appears this ticket is refundable and that I simply have to mail a request for a refund to OBB. Can anyone comment on whether this ticket is fully and truly refundable? As I purchased 4 tickets which were about 3 times the cost of the non flexible SparSchiene. I am hoping I can get a full refund if I complete the OBB fare refund request and in turn, purchase the much cheaper SparSchiene.

Thoughts?

Posted by
3 posts

I have been in contact with oebb. It appears that different rules apply for online purchases. As I printed the pdf for my ticket..it will not be refunded. A very costly and stupid mistake on my part. So buyer beware..by printiing out tickets online..you may be losing any flexibility/refundability.

Posted by
8034 posts

This is a common rule alas of on line purchases of train tickets. It is the printing of the ticket that locks it in. I am not sure why that is (except the desire to grab the money). If the ticket is issued by the company you can exchange it so why does printing the PDF lock you in? I ended up buying a cheaper non flex ticket one time because I read that on the web site and knew I wouldn't have the flexibility anyway with it. But it is easy to overlook.

Posted by
32692 posts

If you have a physical ticket there is only one of it, usually on special card or paper so a train company can be quite sure it won't be used by another.

Print at home tickets can be copied and there is no guarantee that somebody didn't give a copy to somebody else for travel and then ask for a refund.

The train companies have no way of knowing who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys" so that everybody suffers.

Posted by
3 posts

Thanks for the replies..Nigel I appreciate your point. But now that I have printed out 4 tickets..I could copy them to make an endless number of tickets. One would think that the train company has the means to determine that the copied tickets are fake. So one would also think they could identify tickets that have been refunded or cancelled. The idea that a refundable ticket becomes nonref upon printing is confusing and misleading.

Thanks guys for confirming that it is what it is.....disappointing as it is, I guess I have to suck it up!

Posted by
672 posts

Actually, I with OeBB, you can print as many copies of the tickets as you want - all "original" and no need to make photocopies. In fact, I just went back through my emails and found one from from September 2015 confirming our 'Sparscheine' ticket purchase; when I clicked on the URL, my ticket was still there and ready to print.

Posted by
11294 posts

"One would think that the train company has the means to determine that the copied tickets are fake. So one would also think they could identify tickets that have been refunded or cancelled."

Thinking about this, it would depend on the verification methods used. For instance, when I used an online train ticket in Germany, they scanned my printout's barcode, then swiped the credit card used to buy the ticket. With this method, they could easily verify if a ticket had been refunded, and so was no longer valid.

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