Renfe Website for Buying Train Tickets is a Disaster

I'm sorry to hear that. For us, Renfre was one of the easier country specific train websites to use, and we never had a problem getting payment thru. We probably used Mastercard or VISA. SNCF has always been a problem for us. I have never been able to get a transaction to process. Hopefully, the Renfre website will settle down and behave, soon. My suggestion for folks would be to try Renfre, first and then try other platforms if necessary. My experience with Trainline, is yes, they are easy to use, but you do often pay extra and sometimes Trainline does not have all train routes.

I've been a Trainline kind of girl since loco2.com got bought out by RailEurope. IMHO, the small service fees, and not absolutely every train, are worth it for a stress-free user-friendly website.

Oh Man, I miss Loco2 As much as I liked them, I'll never use RailEurope.

Welcome to the Renfe website. It is finicky and I don’t understand why all the new schedules are not loaded at the same time. When we used it, it worked fine and had no problem with paying.

We used it last year but ended up using paypal as our Credit Card wouldn’t go through. Good luck.

I love so many things about Spain, but their IT infrastructure is certainly not one of them. As a society, they seem to have zero sense of UX (User Experience) design, or, more importantly, UX testing.

If anyone thinks RENFE's site is a "disaster", they'd best brace themselves for all the other Spanish websites they'll encounter in their trip planning.

Renfe's website is problematic, as well as their tradition of not selling tickets in a predictable way. A good alternative is competitor Iryo, it's very easy to buy their tickets at www.iryo.eu

The Man in Seat 61 also suggests Petrabax.com. I was trying to find tickets from Madrid to Granada. I found direct only on Renfe, only 1 time out of three direct trains on Omio, and direct only on Trainline. I didn't like the times and was feeling stuck. When I went to plug in my info on Petrabax.com, I was given two suggestions - one was direct trains and the other with connecting trains. Even though the connecting trains are longer, some of the times available were much better. This is for future readers on here.

I think perhaps most local Spanish just buy their tickets at the train station, that's what I've always done. I think mostly only foreigners who want everything in place in advance before their trip use the Renfe ticket buying website.

That said, I've never had an issue looking up trains on Renfe website, maybe cause I use the Spanish version?

Glad to see Petrabax.com mentioned, I had very good results four years ago purchasing digital train tickets for travel throughout Spain. The advantage is the 800 phone number which I did have to call when one set of tickets was not received promptly in email. Prompt customer service rep immediately emailed them to me.

For, AVE tickets definitely want to buy in advance unless it’s arrival day. For people over 65, I think there is a discount card that can be purchased

I think perhaps most local Spanish just buy their tickets at the train
station, that's what I've always done.

Even AVE tickets?

Even AVE tickets?

Sure thing, in Sants there is a larga distancia ticket booth that sells AVE tickets. Though admittedly most of my trips are not AVE, but local ones, which I use the numerous ticket machines in the station for those.

Carlos, aren’t Last minute AVE about twice the cost in comparison to purchasing a couple months in advance?

Carlos, aren’t Last minute AVE about twice the cost in comparison to purchasing a couple months in advance?

Could be... but that never happened to me.

I just checked departures Madrid/Barcelona AVE trains for this Friday and they are a couple for 50€ and a couple for 100€, seems random.

I guess if you are the kind of tourist with a set in stone timetable to keep laid out several months in advance may be different, but for me I value more the flexibility.

Remember the train is not the only way to get around, I think many North Americans overlook our excellent long distance bus system, like Alsa, we have in Spain and are only focused on our "exotic" high speed train. I can understand as they're really cool to ride lol!

A comment regarding Trainline. A few years ago, when I was booking tickets for France, I resorted to Trainline when I couldn’t get a payment thru on SNCF. Then when the trip was cancelled due to COVID travel restrictions, Trainline said I needed to work with SNCF for a refund. What's the point then, if the 3rd party, who should be the advocate, directs you back to SNCF. SNCF said, "you didn't buy the tickets from us." I have no time for Trainline, now. Will not use them.

i am in spain now and gave up on the renfe website really fast! trainline is what i am using now. while on the subject of trains in spain (not rain, ha!) what do all of you think of the stations, especially barcelona, valencia, madrid etc? as a first-timer in spain i am struggling to find my departure platforms. i may be wrong but the big stations don't seem to have a single big board displaying every train departing and arriving. for example, in sants i couldn't find where my train to zaragoza was leaving from. i finally had to ask a staff member who pointed me to a specific part of the station and lo and behold my train was listed on the display there. in valencia i couldn't find my high-speed train until another staff told me to take a free bus to another 'terminal' where all ave trains were leaving from. it seems to me that long-distance, medium-distance, and regional trains are treated as separate entities with their own platforms, ticketing, and displays. i am curious to hear what i can do to be more savvy about this.

This has been my concern since starting to plan.... sounds like TheTrainline.com is the easiest. And when I arrive at the stations - is English easy to find for directions and departure time... What form of payment is best?
I have been planning on using trains: Madrid to Toledo. Toledo to Sevilla. Sevilla to Granada. Granada by plane to Barcelona. Is that realistic? Or should we get a car? Thanks for your comments.

Has anyone used the Renfe phone app? I have also been struggling with their website, trying to find routes and available tickets for my upcoming travel (several months out, so there's that issue, too, which I understand).

I've used Trainline for several years and have had no issues with refunds (even during Covid). But they seem to have changed a bit in the past couple of years. That is, they will return search results but you have to look closely, since they will return results to stations that are not the ones I've searched; they will return results with buses instead of trains; etc., whereas before I'd get more specific results based on my specific searches. Also, their travel alert is hidden. It feels like they are changing and not for the better user experience. Just my opinion.

I've begun using RailEurope instead, for information mostly. We'll see how this year pans out as our travel is > 4 months away so it's too early to book tickets now.

I am either very lucky or it is a stretch to say the website is a disaster. It has worked well for me.

We spent a month in Spain this winter and Renfe worked great except on one booking that required a train change. Also used the Alsa app for bus service and had no problems.

CTWanderer, yes I think your plan is a good one. We are landing in Madrid and transferring to Atocha to take the train to Granada.

I use Trainline and have had good luck.

The clumsiness and unreliability of Renfe’s website is still the same— notwithstanding the fact that in the last decade millions of euros were spent to improve it. Renfe states that train tickets can be bought online 60 days in advance of a train’s departure. It says AVE train tickets can be bought 90 days in advance. When I went to buy high-speed train tickets for the Barcelona to Madrid route, Renfe had tickets up for sale 5 months in advance— likely so it could stay in the running with IRYO and Ouigo who had their tickets for sale 5 months in advance. However, as of today —July 28– Renfe still does not have train tickets for sale just 34 days from now for September 1 for Madrid to San Sebastián. Even more perplexing is that when you go to buy either bus or train tickets for that route in early September, the Renfe site says anything from train or bus tix “ are not available” to only bus tickets are available. And the bus tickets are usually offered at higher prices than what train tickets cost. Why tell customers they can buy train tickets on your website 60 or 90 days in advance when, in fact, they can’t? The failure of Renfe to deliver on its own stated timeframes will put Spain’s National train company at risk of losing huge amounts of market share to the new entries into Spain’s high-speed train market. If IRYO’s, Ouigo’s and the Trainline’s websites are found to be more reliable than Renfe’s, the public may well take its business to the new companies and Renfe could find itself losing market share on routes that once were cash cows for the company. The problem for Renfe is that it no longer has a monopoly on Spain’s train system. It will have to be competitive in the future—at least in the high-speed train market— or it will see the public turn more and more to the private companies whose websites actually work as they should, are user-friendly and don’t waste the time of their customers.
Years ago, there was a weekly television comedy show in the US that had a fictional character who was a telephone operator for the huge conglomerate of American Telephone and Telegraph, AT&T. The character answered customer service calls from the public and, when the customer seemed dissatisfied with the quality of the service they received, the operator became rude and snapped: “ If you don’t like your phone service then next time why don’t you try two Dixie cups connected by a string to make your phone calls. We don’t care, we don’t have to —- we’re the phone company!”
AT&T then— like Renfe today— was a monopoly. But when it lost its monopoly position, AT&T declined until it eventually was reduced to a shadow of its former self.
For Renfe. If changes are not coming to bring the company current with the technologies of the 21st century, the future could turn out the same.

On a more lighthearted note, the poor reputation of Renfe's website is such that El Mundo Today -- essentially a Spanish version of the Onion -- has published several satirical articles/videos referring specifically to the website, among its list of articles about Renfe:

• Renfe descubre ahora que lleva con la web hackeada desde 2006 [Renfe now discovers it's had a hacked website since 2006]
• Renfe admite que no ha vendido nunca un billete a través de su página web [Renfe admits that it's never sold a single ticket through its website]
• Test de personalidad: ¿Qué error de la web de RENFE eres? [Personality test: which Renfe web error are you?]
• La web de Renfe se renueva con 300 nuevos errores [Renfe's website is refreshed with 300 new errors]
• Construyen un monumento en Atocha por las víctimas de la web de Renfe [A monument is being built at Atocha railway station for the victims of Renfe's website]
• Descubren a 15 indigentes viviendo en la web de Renfe [15 homeless individuals discovered living in Renfe's website]

Thanks Andrew for your fun post. The idea of a monument to the victims of Renfe’s website placed at Atocha train station made my day. 😊
Cheers!

Andrew that's great! 😆