Rail TIcket Pick up with US Chip Card

Same card you used to buy the tickets right? Should work, but as a last resort they can run them off at a ticket window with your card.

SCNF has a very straightforward app that can act as your e-ticket. Check it out.

I bought a lot of tickets on SCNF in France and had them loaded as tickets on my iPhone. However, as Rick Steves has pointed out, if you go to buy tickets on SCNF now, and put down USA as your location, you are directed to RailEurope. There does not seem to be an option to load them as e-tickets. You either print them out and possibly lose the non-refundable tickets ($795 service charge), or else have them mail them to you ($27.95 charge I think). So thats bad news.

Also, I found that every time you go to buy tickets, they charge the 7.95 fee, so I think you should try to book all your trains at once and only pay the fee once. Don't buy them one by one.

But this is made harder by the fact that the rates change. I put some tickets from Paris to Bordeaux in my cart and was ready to buy, then suddenly the fare went up from $43 to $50, and when I went back, ALL of the fares had suddenly increased.

This is further complicated by what I saw yesterday - where there was only one option for Strasbourg to Nancy - to print your ticket in the station - who knows how much delay or how many credit card problems you will have then.

When you buy French TER train tickets on-line, you always have to retrieve these at any French train station with the credit card used to make the transaction. This is because these tickets must be validated in the platform stamping machines. Print-at-home tickets will be on A4 or 8 1/2 by 11 paper that will not fit in the stamping machines, plus you could make many copies of these on your computer from a single transaction. Therefore you have to print them at a station with official ticket stock, and once printed, you can't print any more.

Thus railrider's experience from Strasbourg to Nancy, which is by TER trains. It was also a lesson I learned several years ago before chips were standard on US credit cards. Beaune to Lyon is by TER train, and my chipless card would not operate in the station ticket kiosk. I went to the ticket window, and the first agent could not activate the ticket with the mag-strip reader at their register. However the agent at the next window could and I got my tickets printed. Apparently the other agent's mag-strip reader was inoperable, and they had no idea, since all French credit cards had chips in them.

Chantilly is just one station past the end of the Paris RER D line at Orry-la-Ville. You could use an RATP ticket on the line and maybe get an extension ticket from Orry-la-Ville, but then the RER D would be making every single stop along the way, taking a long time. The TER train from Gare du Nord is express to Orry-la-Ville, then Chantilly is the next stop.

The information attributed to R. Steves appears to be out-of-date. SNCF has continuously improved its website and the annoying bump to RailEurope is gone, at least for my computer located in Canada. Even a year or two ago it was possible to choose whether to use RailEurope (never!) or the standard order pages. Also gone is the request to specify a location for ticket delivery. I used to choose Antarctica; worked fine. But that small chuckle is outdated.
SNCF says this about obtaining the printed TER ticket:
"You reserve and pay on line.
"You retrieve your ticket, in France or at the Luxembourg station at a Self-Service terminal, when you like and up the last minute before departure.
"Virtual cards and bank cards without Chip and Pin cannot be used for withdrawals at SNCF-ticket machines. The bank card used for payment and PIN number will be requested when withdrawing your tickets."

Note: It has to be a true chip-and-pin card. If time is of the essence, you could go to any ticket agent the day before the trip. The deal with authenticating the cardboard ticket before boarding, as indicated above, is to stamp day and time. Where e-mail tickets can be printed at home, they come with a seat reservation for a specific time and day so can't be used twice.

I've not had the problem of being sent to another web site with additional fees. I am buying them on SCNF web site and their is no additional fee. I am on the site right now and my choices are print out from machine in France for which I need my original card, mail for $27.95 fee, or retrieve in station with original card at ticket desk. Has anyone bought a ticket on line and then went to machine and printed same with a US chipped credit card, that is what I am trying to find out. Thanks

Tom, are you doing this trip on the day of arrival at CDG?
This is only a 8.70 EUR ticket, you can buy it out of a ticket machine. If the credit card doesn't work, you can use cash. No real need to buy on-line and may only complicate things.

But yes, I retrieved tickets last September from a machine at Gare de Lyon for Paris->Lausanne using a US chip-and-signature card.

Thanks Laura that's the answer I was looking for, and thanks to everyone else for the input some great reply's.

Tom - and as a back-up, if for some reason the pick-up at the machine with the chip card doesn't work, all you have to do is take your reservation # and your card to a ticket window, and an agent will print them for you. So choosing the print-out at station option actually gives you two options.

I don't know if this helps at all but here's what I did:

I purchased my SNCF tickets online at work before I left (with a credit card) and chose to have them email me my tickets. I printed them off along with my confirmation for the reservation/purchase (this was probably overkill but it was my first time purchasing train tickets... so I just wanted all the paperwork ready for those "just in case" situations).

When I arrived at the train station and located one of those yellow ticket validating machines (I read somewhere that you had to validate your tickets using the yellow machine/device).

Realizing I couldn't validate my email tickets (they wouldn't fit into the machine) I started to panic a little bit (I kept hearing "you have to validate your tickets in the yellow machine" in my mind... LOL! And as this was my very first time taking a train anywhere, I was already a bit nervous... I'm a solo traveler, so it's up to me alone to figure things out... but none of this is important... sorry for digressing)!

I suppose what I'm trying to get around to is that there are kiosks everywhere that can print your tickets... I just went to one of those, chose 'English' as my preferred language and selected the option that allowed me to print my tickets, all I had to do was enter my last name and then enter the reservation/confirmation number that was printed on my emailed tickets. My train tickets were printed and then I was able to validate them at the yellow machine nearby.

So this might be an option for you as well. ; )*

Sorry for rambling everyone!