With the recent landslide in France, we had to alter our train itinerary from Lyon to Milan. Now going to Nice - Ventimiglia and onto Milan. Portions of the tickets for the trip from SNCF site are downloadable to iPhone but the Ventimiglia to Milan tickets are unavailable to download (train etanger) message says we need to retrieve from a kiosk.
Not sure about these instructions. Does this mean to retrieve at kiosk in Ventimiglia? Or, can I retrieve at any SNCF in France? Thank you for help!
Are you changing trains in Ventimiglia? If so, given that Ventimiglia to Milan is a journey entirely within Italy, I suspect you will need to pick up the tickets at a kiosk in Ventimiglia because SNCF does not operate any trains entirely within Italy. (It does operate to Ventimiglia, but only to/from France.)
EDITED TO ADD: This is a Trenitalia train, not an SNCF-operated train, as confirmed below.
I would get those tickets already from a Kiosk in Lyon. I would not expect an SNCF Kiosk in a Trenitalia station (which Ventimiglia is).
You will not be able to get those from an Italian machine.
This is one case where booking with Trainline would have helped, as they would have given you e-tickets for all segments. SNCF for some reason cannot be bothered to link their system to the booking system of its neighbors, and thus only offers traditional printed tickets according to the TCV tariff for foreign sectors.
Note: Did you already have a ticket? If so, refuse the offer of a a refund by SNCF. In an attempt to maintain its reputation as a company that doesn't care about its passengers SNCF has decided to blatantly ignore the law here.
The law is this: If for some reason the train you booked does not run the railways have to offer you three options:
SNCF is only offering passengers the first option, not informing them that they have other options as well. That is in contravention of the law.
If the railways fail to give you an alternative routing within a reasonable time after the original departure (the law mentions 100 minutes here) you can make your own arrangements, and then reclaim all the costs back on, in this case, SNCF.
However the moment you accept the full refund you waive all your rights. That is what SNCF is of course hoping for.
And you have to claim the refund before the time the train was supposed to leave. Otherwise, the refund option disappears from the booking on the app even if SNCF cancelled the train.
We have to go to the station to get the refund from when my husband's train home was cancelled during the heatwave. They say a credit voucher would
be automatically issued, but who knows. Thanks for the reminder.
SNCF is really not following the law here. If a train is cancelled they should offer you alternative travel as one of the options. They should not offer refund as only option in that case.
The OP hasn't actually mentioned having issues with SNCF. Rather she is being a sensible and prudent traveller in my opinion in just altering her itinerary to an alternative and open route.
She asked quite a narrow and reasonable practical question.
Doing what I would do in this position, just get on with it and re-plan, not shouting demanding my "rights".
The law, as stated by Wengen (and I assume it is right) is not designed or really intended to apply in a case like this where there is a major, unplanned line blockage. From the posts I have seen there doesn't even seem to be the option of providing alternative road transport over the affected section as the highway also seems to be closed.
Letter of the law and intent of the law are quite different things- not just in this transport related case. In the case given by @Bets that seems to be what this quoted law was meant to be about.
I, for one, do not think that SNCF are being unreasonable in this instance.
There are probably sensible reasons why SNCF can not divert the international trains to Milan via Ventimiglia- like line capacity and driver route knowledge and timing constraints.
On the narrow question- given the SNCF frequency into Ventimiglia I would have assumed they have their own TVM's there, but the SNCF connect website says physical tickets can be collected at any station. So collecting at Lyon just sounds like a sensible prudent option to me.
I don't think she can print these tickets at an SNCF kiosk in Lyon. I think these are Trenitalia tickets from Ventimiglia to Milan, therefore they have to be printed at a Trenitalia kiosk in Ventimiglia, as Andrew said.
Or am I missing something here ?
Since these are SNCF tickets I would get them printed in Lyon or Nice, France. Just go to a ticket agent and show your Reference number or email and they will print them for you. This happened to us recently with SNCF tickets when we took a train from Paris Gare du Nord to Brussels and then Brussels to Bruge, Belgium. We were told to get our tickets printed at a kiosk for the Brussels to Bruge portion, but they could only be printed at a station in France. So we got them printed at Paris Gare du Nord before we left on the train. The kiosks can be confusing, so we went to a ticket agent at the train station and they happily printed them for us and knew right away what to do, since they must do this frequently.
I don't think these are SNCF tickets. That is why she can't get them in the SNCF app.
Yes, thank you Kim! That's what I was trying to say.
Of course I am not the OP so can't speak definitively and am happy to be proven wrong (please come back with more details!). But based on the described routing, I think it must be an Italian operator providing the service between Ventimiglia and Milan.
As I mentioned above, at Ventimiglia SNCF only operates to/from France (it's the last stop for eastbound trains and the next stop on westbound trains is Menton in France), so if the routing is Nice-Ventimiglia-Milan, there must be a change of train in Ventimiglia. The operator between Ventimiglia and Milan cannot be SNCF, as they do not operate any wholly domestic Italian train services.
Thanks to everyone for their help. No train tickets were purchased prior to landslide. Tickets were purchased after landslide and schedule was altered on website. (Had hoped to go from Lyon Part Dieu to Chambery Challes les Eaux). That route was no longer available. Choice was either going through Switzerland or Nice. We chose the Nice route.
I will try to print tickets in Lyon or Ventimiglia. Looks like operator is “Train Etranger” #635 at Ventimiglia to Milano centrale.
etranger translates into English as 'foreigner' or 'foreign'. So that is not a company- it is just saying 'not operated by SNCF'- ie- operated by Trenitalia in this case but it would mean whichever relevant country if applied to a different destination or route.
Yes, this is a Trenitalia-operated train. You can confirm on a Trenitalia train status site using the 635 train number that it is in fact a Trenitalia train from Ventimiglia to Milano Centrale. Today's 635 was scheduled to depart Ventimiglia at 15:10 and arrive Milano Centrale at 18:55.
Therefore, you will only be able to print these Trenitalia tickets at a Trenitalia kiosk once you arrive in Ventimiglia (or by asking someone at a ticket window in Ventimiglia to print them for you).
You will not be able to print them at an SNCF kiosk as they are not SNCF tickets. Therefore you can not print them in Lyon.
When we went from Paris Gare du Nord to Brussels and Bruges I had booked the whole trip through SNCF even though we were on SNCF Thalys from Paris to Brussels and then going to be on a Belgian Train from Brussels to Bruges. SNCF chose not to let us print the tickets from Brussels to Bruges through our email nor through the SNCF app, but they did tell us to print the tickets only at a French station before we left France. That is why I think it would be worthwhile to try to get the tickets printed at Lyon or Nice before you leave France, just in case that is the situation for your tickets also.
Thank you for all the input. My plan is to try and get them printed at Lyon Part Dieu with plenty of time on our hands OR if unsuccessful get them printed at Ventimiglia. It’s always an adventure! But that is why we travel!!
@Kim: You are mistaken. The tickets can only be printed out from an SNCF kiosk, or at the ticket office. They cannot be printed in Italy, as they are French tickets, not Italian tickets.
And yes, SNCF can issue tickets for Italian trains (and Swiss Trains, and Belgian Trains and German trains) but only the old fashioned way, as they have decided not to implement the European e-ticket standard. Which is why you need to have the tickets printed out on security paper.
The best solution for trips from France to neighbouring countries is to either buy from the national railway of the neighbour, or to buy from Trainline. There you often kan get e-tickets for the whole route. In this case Trainline would have been able to book the whole trip, and give you e-tickets. Probably would have been cheaper too.
So the OP must have these tickets printed in France.
