Train ticket overcharge?

In fairness, Rick does say this on his web page that contains the link to rail Europe:

"On National-Railway Websites

Many European national rail companies allow customers to buy tickets online at the going European price (usually for faster classes of trains for which reservations are required, or at least recommended). Advance tickets can be an especially smart buy for popular high-speed trains (such as France’s TGV trains and Italy’s Le Frecce trains), which frequently sell out.

If you’re looking for the cheapest possible ticket between A and B — especially if A and B are in the same country — this is the way to go."

The ticket prices are 102 euro, not US$. That is equivalent to about $115 when the exchange and 3% credit card fees are included.

Caveat Emptor. The constant discussion on this forum is how to purchase railway tickets at the least cost. The almost universal consensus is: Never use Rail Europe.
Unfortunately Rick is in a long term marketing agreement with this outfit. Up until 10 or 15 years ago, this was OK, but now the word is out that there are much less expensive ways to go. Rail Europe is owned largely by SNCF, the French national railway operator. On their own website, if you tell the truth and admit you are from the USA, their website will automatically shunt you to Rail Europe. But if you lie and tell them you live in France, or Croatia, or Antarctica, they will let you continue on their site and buy tickets at the best prices. It is an odd, and very transparent rip-off.
Just as milk at the 7-11 costs a whole more than at a mega-supermarket, convenience comes at a price.
Rail Europe is very satisfied with your money, and I don't see anything on their site about "Lowest Prices Guaranteed!" Yeh, Rick makes a small pittance on the transaction, but don't say he didn't warn you.

Well, that's fair enough I suppose. But I wouldn't expect to see a discrepancy of more than 10-20%. I was charged almost double the price Trenitalia is asking. That leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Caveat Emptor applies in this case, but I think this sort of thing really hurts Rick Steves' credibility as a reliable advisor to European travelers.

I feel I was grossly overcharged by a service he recommended. That's not good for repeat business.

RailEurope is the second party vendor, and does add a surcharge. Consequently I've always avoided them. I didn't realize the surcharge was that much.

Regarding your last question about prices dropping as the travel date approaches – actually, the discount tickets typically sell quickly, and buying at the last minute usually means you'll be paying the higher, full price.

I feel your pain. We all make silly mistakes when we get into the European travel game and start dealing with things we aren't experienced in. Getting nicked for $75 bucks or so by Rail Europe is not the end of the world. And now you know. Rick does not have any control of what Rail Europe quotes for individual rail orders. Maybe he could write them a letter asking "Why are you folks ripping off people who trust me?"

david,

Sorry to hear that you had a problem with your tickets. Hopefully Laura will spot this post, as she's extremely knowledgeable about this sort of thing, and I'm sure she'll be able to shed some light on what happened with your purchase.

"Unfortunately Rick is in a long term marketing agreement with this outfit..."

If my name were associated with a company that charges significantly more than another, or automatically charged more because you're from America, I would be in touch with my lawyers to renegotiate my contract. What exactly does Rick get from this affiliation?

PS - David, I am so sorry for your being ripped off and I would be upset too. Thank you for posting, hopefully others will see this and learn from it.

What exactly does Rick get from this affiliation?

Well of course I don't have access to the contract but a reasonable deduction would have to be :

a. a fair wodge of greenbacks.

He's making something off every person who clicks through on his link. How much per customer? Who knows. But a penny here and a penny there and pretty soon you have a pretty big pile of pennies.

Probably makes a bit for every click through, and then some commission for every ticket and pass sold.

And then there is the big money - he doesn't need a fulfillment staff for tickets and railpasses, and all the overhead that goes with them. When it was a small family business a couple of people could handle all the pass and ticket stuff. Now that it is big business that's a whole department that has been outsourced and all the inherent problems are somebody else's problems, just like big corporations have done elsewhere.

And then Rick just has to count the piles of money that are paid back to him.

We mostly drove on our trip to France in 2012, but we wanted to take the TGV from Aix-en-Provence to CDG the day before we flew back to the US. I used SCNF, put in the US as my country, got bumped to Rail Europe and found tickets at a good time and at what I thought was a good price. But I didn't buy them immediately.

I had the good fortune to be almost simultaneously reading the Travel Forum for all the French info I could get and learned about putting in a different home country, et voilà! I didn't get bumped to Rail Europe. I found many, and I mean many, more schedule options with different prices for different times of day and chose one that was convenient for us and less than 1/2 price of what Rail Europe was charging. Those tickets I did buy after setting up my Verified by Visa option. So does that mean Rail Europe inflated the price by 50%+? I don't know for sure because we didn't depart at the same time as we would have using Rail Europe.

If it hadn't been for this forum, and the information provided under Travel Tips -- Transportation, I wouldn't have learned that lesson. Now I get regular emails from SCNF about all their sales and specials. I love that. It reminds me of what a good time we had in France that year.

The RailEurope price-padding is probably based on the base-fare (highest fare) price, not a percentage of whatever type of ticket is sold.

As someone else mentioned, low-priced economy or super-economy tickets go fast, so there is usually no benefit to waiting for train ticket prices to go down - prices are set before the schedules are published.

David, I don't think you are comparing apples to apples. RailEurope.com does not charge significantly more than Trenitalia. You are welcome to email a copy of your invoice to me at laura@ricksteves.com, if you wish, so I can see the details.

On that route [I looked at the direct train Rome Fiumicino-Florence SMN], for 1st-class tickets, Trenitalia charges either €51 or €71 per person and Rail Europe currently charges either $61 or $84 per person. These seem to be fair exchange values, given the volatility of currency exchange and the fact that Rail Europe cannot make adjustments as frequently as banks do. Some credit cards will also charge a fee for any foreign transaction, which you avoid when using a US agent. Seats at the lower rates will sell out first (not be added later), and since RE's database is directly connected to Trenitalia, there should not be any significant difference in the supply.

On top of that, RE's per-order handling fee for e-tickets is $7.95 [edited to delete RPP reference]. I'm taking these price quotes from the online shopping cart. Fares shown online are web-only; if you buy the tickets by telephone, then all prices and fees are higher.

Rail Europe does have a Lowest Price Guarantee, but with very specific steps on how to make a claim against it: If within 24 hours of booking with us you find a lower online published price in US$ for the exact same train ticket or rail pass, we will refund you 100% of the difference. See also http://www.raileurope.com/promotions/rail-europe-lowest-price-guarantee.html.

Many thanks to Laura from the Rick Steves organization for responding to my post. That certainly reflects well on the organization. I have shared the documentation and the almost 90% markup that RailEurope added to the ticket price. Not bad return for them when all they do is buy the tickets for you, which you could do yourself, and slap a service charge on the transaction. I would have thought the service charge would be it. After all, THEY aren't operating and maintaining a multi-billion dollar rail network - Trenitalia is doing all the heavy lifting here.

I have learned a few things from the invoice that David provided and further testing of all three web shopping carts (Rail Europe, Trenitalia, and ItaliaRail, which was his price comparison point).

Primarily, I discovered that RE's shopping cart can't process the Italian discount fares if a regional train connection is requested on the same ticket. If you book the direct train (running 2x/day) from Rome Airport to Florence, or the direct train from Rome Termini to Florence, you'll normally be offered all three fare options (Super Economy, Economy, and Base), until they sell out. When you include a regional leg with no discount options, the system defaults to Base fare for the whole route. The same applies when I test Rome to Vernazza, with a regional train connection at La Spezia.

Bottom line, for other reasons as well, when booking tickets through our Rail Europe link, I recommend that you break up connecting trips and focus on booking those that offer advance discounts and/or require reservations. Sometimes, it's the only way, such as when booking pass holder seat reservations on a connecting route (again, especially if one connection is a regional train that doesn't take reservations). (FYI, this reasoning does not apply to airline tickets, which work differently.)

Laura, thanks for the wise advice. However, for me, I plan to book directly from now on.

BTW, I assume that I have no recourse to seek a revised, i.e., discounted fare from Rail Europe.

One more thought on this matter. While the workaround that Laura suggested for the bug in Rail Europe's program that kicks out discounted fares when a regional trip is added to a high-speed, multi-priced trip - i.e., booking them separately - should work, Rail Europe needs to fix this bug.

If Trenitalia's software can handle multiple legs of a trip without problems, so can the front-end that Rail Europe bolts onto the Trenitalia website.

Just sayin . . .

Trenitalia.com appears to have some similar issues. If David were travelling later than one week from now, I might encourage him to exchange his tickets, but not in this case. As well, the cheapest rates are now sold out. I have forwarded the issue to RE to address, both in the shopping cart, and if they want to reply to David directly.

David, I hope you have allowed enough time between your arrival and the train departure. In theory the ticket is dead if you miss the trains. Someone posted that there is an informal, one hour period after the train has left the station but the web site doesn't reflect that. And if a discount ticket then it is really dead.

Frank, thanks for that caution.

I allowed 3 hours between scheduled landing and train departure.

That SHOULD give us plenty of time to collect our bags and clear customs.

At least I hope so . . .

Just avoid Rail Europe, and you won't ever have to be worried about being overcharged by them again. I still can't imagine why RS wants to be associated with them...AND Eurail Passes for that matter.

Could we just get a recap of why this price was paid?
Here is my finding.
On www.trenitalia.com there are 2 base fare options, both the same price of 51 euro per person. One is a direct Freccia train (2 each day) from the airport to Florence SMN. The other, more frequent, connecting trains are on the Regionale 2nd class train to Rome Tiburtina connecting to a Freccia train to Florence SMN.
So that should cost 102 euro equal to about $113 US.

On www.italiarail.com there are also the 2 options, the 2 daily direct trains and the connections utilize the 1st class Leonardo Da Vinci Express to Rome Termini connecting to a Freccia train to Florence SMN. The price in USD is $32 for two Express tickets plus $96 for two Freccia tickets plus a $5 service fee equals $133 US.
You could reduce that a bit if you specify the transaction in euros since the exchange rate is a generous (for them) 1.12.

So did Laura give you a good reason for the $191.25 US?

As I understand it, Laura discovered that combining the Leonardo Express to Roma Termini with the Freccargente from there to Florence SMN, caused the program to kick out the economy and super economy (non-refundable) options and work with the base price for a refundable ticket, which is significantly higher. that is apparently what they sold me. It's a software bug (in my view) that needs to be fixed.

But the lesson is: Don't book with Rail Europe unless you want to risk being ripped off. Note that not all the ticket prices from them are a total ripoff - just some. But why take the risk? Book direct with ItaliaRail.

The prices I mentioned above are Base Fares, not Economy or Super Economy.

david,

For future reference, I'd suggest pre-booking only fast trains and not Regionale segments. It's just as easy to buy Regionale tickets locally and there's no price advantage for booking those in advance.

" Someone posted that there is an informal, one hour period after the train has left the station but the web site doesn't reflect that."

Are you referring to Base Fare tickets? This is a portion of the information on the Trenitalia website.....

"Access to another train: it's possible to catch another train for the same route of the same category by addressing in advance to the train crew and paying a surcharge of 8 Euros per traveller:"

• From one hour before until one hour after the departure of the booked train.
• Even beyond that period if there is another train of the same type, taking the first available train of the same category or lower to get to destination.
• If used over a period other than the allowed one, the traveller is considered as without a ticket.

The ability to change tickets up to one hour after the train departs is only available on Base Fare tickets, AFAIK. With Economy and Super Economy, once the train has departed the ticket is worthless.

Actually the lesson is to book directly with Trenitalia to get the best fares, not an agency like RailEurope. Most people on this board have known this for a long time.

Rick Steves may include a link to RE but you don't to use it. What really bugs me is the Railpass section. We use the Swiss pass options and in the past RS would have a chart or spreadsheet showing all options so one could decide for yourself. You would only get kicked over to RE for the purchase. Now, there is no display of options. It appears you get sent to the RE website right away. There is no choice of options--- you enter # of people and # of travel days and Ta-da! the one perfect solution appears. I do not like this. There may well be other options that should be considered, if some travel days are too short to be covered on a pass, or other considerations intervene. The new RS Railpass thing eliminates all choice and individual thinking. We have bought Swiss passes from RS in the past but will not do it again.