French Trains-What did I do wrong?

In my experience, only the Prems fare with Print-at-Home offers the PayPal option. Since your route has a connection, perhaps different rules applied to the different legs and they weren't both Prems. Thalys tickets also have different names/features/restrictions. However, you should have no problem collecting tickets from a French ticket machine using the same credit cards and I would collect all of them at your first opportunity.

Thanks, Laura. This may also be a case of information overload while I waited for tonight to arrive to get these. I'm certain at your end you are aware of the difficulty in getting straight info on SNCF, they don't make it easy. I am presuming we can get easily get these at Nord when we step off the Eurostar, before we make our way across to Montparnasse? As for the Thalys, if we do that option (as opposed to through Lille) we'll likely get that ticket on their site.
(As an aside, I am also gnashing my teeth over the added complexity and cost of this because the direct train from Lazare to Bayeux is off-line due to track work, which caused us a bunch of shuffling. First-world problems. Sigh)

We used www.capitainetrain.com for our trip last year. For trains with reserved seats we were able to print at home. For trains with general seating we got a code to use at any train station, and printed those tickets in Paris at a station near our hotel. We used our US credit card to pay when we made the online bookings.

If you go this route be sure to read their note about getting the Thalys card if you are travelling on the Thalys system

Larry,

Are you able to cancel the tickets you purchased & use the site Bill G gave you? It sounds like you will have peace of mind when you do the printouts.

I think it depends more on which trains you are getting tickets for rather than the site you use. Some tickets are printable at home and some must be printed at a station using the code they give you when you purchase as Bill G said. I had the same issue in 2012 when I purchased tickets for several train voyages. Some were printable at home, some were not. I had no problem getting the actual tickets at the station using the confirmation codes.

the line at the station ticket counter, and then the interaction with the SNCF staff, is good practice for dealing with the bureaucracy. You've clearly read the RS advice on tickets -- apply the same to the agent: be polite, cheerful, not too loud, etc. Consider what a reasonable amount of time for the line to move would be, then triple it. On the plus side, an agent in a good mood will be glad to chat with you about anything you might have questions on.

Thanks, all. It's making some sense.

Just to answer the last couple posts: These are Prems, so not can't be cancelled/exchanged, I can't even get them to make up the extra money they charged while I locked their system trying to back out and re-input while looking for the missing e-delivery option. And like I said, I fortunately now have a real chip and pin card and used it, so I should be able to just go to any machine and collect these. At which point it then becomes making sure we can figure out the validation process before we board, which would not have been necessary with e-mail tix.

The tickets you pick up at the station, just as those you print at home, do not need to be validated if they are for a particular train and time. The conductor will check your tickets when you're on the train. As far as I know the only tickets that have to be validated before boarding are 'open' tickets that are good on any train within a time period - you have to validate them to start the time period. At least that's my understanding. I never had to validate any pre-purchased tickets for particular trains, even if I got them printed at the station using a conf code. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

If you have tickets to pick up and don't want to use a machine (or can't get your card to work there), you can use an SNCF Boutique. These are "train ticket stores" and there are many in Paris, as well as other cities. You take a number (like at a bakery), there's usually a seat, and once you get to the desk, you can pick up all your tickets at once (they just entered numbers from my printouts, swiped my card, and handed me my tickets, in just a minute or two).

I concur with Harold. I was in France for a month, needed all kinds of train tickets, some could print at home, most not. I went to the first Boutique and had all the tickets printed at once. The agent was extremely patient and double-checked everything to be sure all the correct tickets were there.