Help! Train tickets on Scnf- France

Hi Jill,

The SNCF website this week has been as perturbed as the rail traffic.

I've just booked the same Thalys tickets myself on the same route Paris/Bruxelles.

Believe me, if you didn't get an instant email with your dossier, and if your bank card did not get charged you DON'T have tickets. SEVERAL times when I was trying the screen would just melt into nothing and I'd have to start all over again. I kept trying until I was successful.

And, I wouldn't trust the mail, nor the hotel to hold my tickets. Select the option "Pick up tickets at the station or an SNCF boutique. You will need the printed receipt with the 6 letter "reference de dossier" and the bank card used for the purchase in order to pick up the tickets. There are SNCF boutiques all over Paris.

Bon Voyage!

If you don't hear from SNCF today, call your credit card provider again and tell the customer service person to deny the purchase if it comes through. Tell the person you are going to re-book the tickets and you want that purchase to go through. Or to avoid possible confusion and delays, re-book using a different credit card. As Bill said, you can retrieve your tickets at any SNCF station or boutique. Credit cards with magnetic strips don't work in the ticket machines in French stations, but you can go to a ticket window and have the agent swipe your card.

Thank you Bill...do you think the strike is affecting them?
What do I do to get the option of picking up my tickets at the SCNF?

Do you know what screen you were on when you chose that option b/c when I choose the english website, I don't get that option...I only get the mail ticket option.

I would really rather have that option!

The SNCF website often takes a dip but this week is the worse I've ever seen.

The site assumes we are in Great Britain when we click "English" that's why it only gives the mail option. (I bought mine on the French pages).

BUT, you can buy your same tickets on Thalys.com just as well, and the English screens WILL give you the option of picking up the tickets at the station.

i.e. "Collect your ticket from an automatic ticket machine with the same credit card used for payment (except for business cards and the "Frequent Traveller and Flat Rate" season tickets) or from station ticket office or Boutiques (in France only)."

Bon Voyage!

alright, I checked on the Thalys website instead of the TGV-Europe site...
I used my husband's email to reserve and now we just have to pay for the tickets.

Now my question is this:
the reservation requires that we pay for our tickets at a SCNF boutique before the 27th...but we won't be in Paris til the 30th.

Should try pay with a credit card for pickup at a kiosk? My husband has a MC business card with a microchip...do you think this would work to get the tickets and pick them up at the kiosk?

Even if you initially chose to use a ticket machine/kiosk to retrieve your tickets, you always have the option of going to the ticket window. It just means you'll have to stand in line. If you're not going to be in France before the reservation deadline date, you'll need to pay for the tickets NOW. I've never reserved first and paid later, but I assume that you be able to access your reservation online and go ahead with payment.

Just for the record, if you book on the tgv-europe site and choose Great Britain as both your country of residence and the country in which you will retrieve your tickets, you can still pick up your tickets at any SNCF station or boutique in France.

The i.e. quote " " in my last post was cut and pasted from one line above the choice of ticket retrieval that you picked.

If your tickets aren't paid for on time your reservation will be cancelled.

Your options now are to try to call Thalys and give them your credit card information to pay for the tickets or forget about that reservation, rebook (selecting the option I quoted above) and pay for them on line.

Good luck!

You've all been really really helpful...the Thalys site was defintely easier to handle than the TGV-Europe site (the cookies on my browser kept sending me back to TGV Europe until I deleted them, I was infintely getting sent to TGV instead of Thalys.com)

I have registered for ticketless travel on Thalys...now I'll see if that works ...and using my husband's card.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

UPDATE: TGV finally emailed me yesterday to tell me that my tickets were processed and sent on the 19th when I ordered them.
Correspondingly, my hotel in London emailed me to say that my tickets had been received ...I had emailed them too.

After everyone's advice, I had made a 2nd reservation on thalys, which I will not fulfill..I'm glad that I didn't buy the 2nd set of tickets right away or else I would have 2 sets now!

but I still think it is true ...go direclty to Thalys, but don't buy from Rail Europe always b/c their rates were 3x as much as on thalys' website.