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Can I activate BritRail pass w/ cell phone?

Posted by (US) on

Hello, good Rick Steves travelers!

I’m getting ready for a trip to England soon, traveling light. Have purchased my 3 day BritRail Flexi-pass but am just a bit nervous at being able to use the email link to activate it. Issue is, that I”m only planning to carry my cell phone. (Not my laptop or tablet.). I have an approx. 4 yr old i-phone and just ONCE in a while, online forms don’t work well. It’s rare but when it happens at home, I just hop on my laptop to do the form/ activation, etc.

Does anyone have experience with this? What concerns me is that I have to click a link in my confirmation email to activate it, which opens a webpage. Then one must fill out a form to complete the process. When we were in Switzerland last year, the Swiss rail passes integrated seamlessly into an app once purchased, and auto-activated the first day you presented them to a conductor. Thought the BritRail pass would work the same, but it turns out, no.

Again, thanks for any advice! I don’t want to get caught flat-footed…. Yet also don’t want to drag around a bigger bag in order to carry my laptop UNLESS I have to.

Best,

Lisa in KY

Posted by
1257 posts

How many browsers do you have installed on your iPhone? If just Safari, I would suggest installing Chrome and Edge, maybe even Firefox, which would give you a better chance of being able to complete the form if you encountered a problem,

Posted by
13 posts

Great suggestion, Mark. Thank you so much, I had not thought of that.
I’ll feel more confident traveling with multiple browsers on the phone. I’m adding Firefox right now.
I have Chrome. I also have Safari but honestly never thought to try an alternate browser on the mobile when filling out a form didn’t work. Great idea!

Thanks again, Lisa

Posted by
175 posts

Hi Lisa,

The problem might have been a javascript thing. Their webpage no doubt uses javascript (a programming language) to do it's tricky things. Most modern browsers should be able to do that unless they are programmed to "not" execute javascript to avoid possible privacy and tracking issues. I use Firefox and I have an add-on called Ublock Origin for windows, and another blocker add-on for my Android phone. To fill in forms, I have to temporarily disable the blocker to allow everything to work. So make sure you don't have add-on software, or security anti-tracking options running in your browser when you do forms or payment things.

Good idea, putting a couple of other browsers on your phone. Note that when you first run a new browser, it might ask (or even beg) you to make it your default browser. Probably don't want to change default browsers as you're very used to the one you are using.

Posted by
13 posts

Tanks, TravelerGuy - hadn’t thought about Java script blockers and anti tracking stuff getting in the way. Very helpful- thank you!

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