Eurail multi country pass doesn't seem worth it

Nice to see a first hand report. However, I noticed you have been hanging around here since 09. Surely since that time you would have read one or more posts addressing this subject on this site. Rail pass are no longer the "no brainer good deal" that they once were 25 or more years ago. People have been posting for years that you need to do the math to determine if a rail pass is cost effective or not. And it is generally not. BUT, thank for confirming it.

What frank said x2 .

It is good that you posted as hopefully it will help others.

Hi,

In your case I would not have bought that type of pass. I always buy (since 2007) a ten day German Pass. True, you are at the mercy of the conductor. Except that one time in Germany in 1989, I have had satisfactory and very often nice conductors on DB when checking my Pass. On night trains the DB conductors did not seem interested in seeing your Pass but the seat reservation. They always cancelled that first. Have I made a small mistake on the Pass? Yes, a stupid one at that. Last summer I put the wrong date down. The DB conductor corrected it for me and just told me to write the correct date next time. I find the conductors unwilling to "cancel" your date after it has been written in annoying. In that case I ask the next conductor, which may or may not work, depending on the conductor.

Whether a pass is worth it or not is something that should and can be determined BEFORE you buy one. No - they are not a good fit for everyone nor every trip - it does require some homework to make the determination. Some countries are are more pass friendly than others as well.

I like the way that the Man in Seat 61 puts it - "If you'll forgive me for saying so, overseas visitors sometimes seem brainwashed into thinking that taking a train in Europe always has to mean buying a Eurail pass. Of course it doesn't! You can buy the same cheap point-to-point tickets that we Europeans buy, at the same prices with no added booking fees, direct from the same train operator websites that we use."

I also think that this website, geared to budget, tentative travelers of a certain age, does everyone a disservice by selling and promoting passes. People trust this site for good information and trust what they sell, but I think this is a true conflict of interest here.

Brainwashed is a great way to describe it. I'm astonished at the number of people just here on the RS forums who talk about buying Eurail Passes.

Riding the train from Munich to Fussen to see the castles an elderly American lady was excited to tell me how she and her husband were using another "day" on their wonderful Eurail Pass for this particular trip. I didn't have the heart to tell her that my family of 4 were ALL traveling on a Bayern Ticket for about 30Euro total for the SAME EXACT TRIP.

Also worth noting is the difference handwriting numbers. Europeans always write the number "1" with that little (and sometimes not so little) flag on the the top so that it would look like a "7" to most Americans. The European "7" is written with a cross hatch to distinguish it from a "1". Thus a "7" written by an American will look like a "1" to a European. That will lead to confusion writing dates on rail passes. Add in the difference in date conventions: "day-month-year" for Europeans, "month-day-year" for Americans.

As noted in another thread, one person's "brainwashed" is another person's "excellent product awareness campaign".

The way that most European countries (except UK and Ireland) write the 1 (and cross the 7) isn't your biggest problem. Most countries in Europe (and elsewhere) write numerical dates in the format day-month-year - THE MONTH GOES IN THE MIDDLE! So today is 31/07/17 in Europe (and other places).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country

The Eurail Pass is intended for travelers outside of Europe with a few exceptions. Since the Eurail materials are printed also in Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, no longer are North Americans the only ones using the Passes. Anytime you see an international tourist using the Eurail materials in THEIR language, ie, the booklet, the map, etc., you can bet they have a Pass too, otherwise how can they obtain the materials, Have I seen them using the Pass or the accompanying materials, of course, I have. There are tons of international youth tourists traveling in Europe.

I wish we could see how you wrote the date on the pass. Feel free to send a copy, if you wish. It's a very important point of using a flexi style of pass, with a page of instructions dedicated to that in materials that come with. Fuzzy or penciled or overwritten dates would all be common methods of trying to game the system. Anyone else to appeal to would be other station staff. But yes, the conductor has a lot of authority.

Mistakes happen and incur fines with other ticket types as well, which could include not validating a ticket that requires it (occasionally, this is done by handwriting the date and time), boarding the wrong train, buying a fare type for which you don't qualify, or even booking a nonrefundable ticket for the wrong date.

Yes writing on ambiguous dates is one of the ways less scrupulous people are known to scam rail passes, as is altering them (3 to an 8 etc). So other people come under suspicion.

Crossing sevens is quite common in the UK today (but not the majority), although writing a one with a long upstroke certainly isn't .