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Managing Eurail pass is confusing

Posted by on

Hello,

I have some questions about my Eurail pass. I've searched the forum here, searched Google, and watched a video on YouTube, but still find it overall confusing.

Some facts:

  • I purchased a Eurail Global Mobile Pass Flex for 5 days of travel within a 1 month period.
  • There are 4 travelers.
  • I have a confirmation email of this order.
  • We are traveling end of February and beginning of March (i.e. not peak season).

In addition to the Eurail Pass, through Eurail I made a paid reservation on Eurostar for the day we are traveling from London to Paris. I have a receipt for this reservation.

What I find confusing is when I should activate my pass and then how I should make reservations for smaller intra-country trips. And also how my Eurail website account is supposed to interact with my Eurail passes.

Here are my questions if anyone can help:

  1. I have added all four passes to the Eurail mobile app. However, they are all only partially complete (2 steps out of 3). For the last step — activation — it was unclear if (a.) I can activate it now but choose the date when the 1-month countdown should start, which would be in the future; or (b.) when I activate it the 1-month countdown starts right then, which would be bad, because it would run out before we actually go on our trip. Does anyone know if (a.) or (b.) is the correct assumption?

  2. When I go to the Eurail website, login and go to My Eurail Account > Pass Orders Overview my passes are not there. However, the reservation I made on Eurostar (that I used my pass details for) does appear in my account. Do the Eurail passes only appear on the Eurail website after I have activated them?

  3. Related to #2, what I do in the mobile app seems to be independent of what I do on the website. For example, the trip I created on the website is not synced to the mobile app (and vice versa). Also, on the mobile app it forced me to create a new trip for each pass I added, so I have 4 trips now even though the passes are for my family and we’re all traveling together. I don’t need to use “trips” but it seems like it’s a required part of the reservation process, at least that is how they are grouped. Overall trips are very confusing to me and I’m not sure how they relate to the mental model of how I’m supposed to think about my Eurail passes. Does how you manage “trips” matter for acquiring and using the actual tickets? Or can I just ignore them?

  4. When I try to book a reservation for smaller legs of a journey through the Eurail website, for example a train from Oxford to London, I am told for all the available options that a seat reservation is “Not available from Eurail.com. This seat reservation can’t be booked on our website. Check 'More information' for other ways to book.” The more information link directs me to ACPRail (acprail.com). From what I can gather, ACPRail wants me to pay $10 per person for a seat reservation — which seems to be about the same price as a regular ticket! So, my question: is reserving a seat on these shorter routes required? Or are most of them fairly empty where you can just select the route that day in your Eurail app and hop on?

Thanks for any help or direction you can provide!

-David

Posted by
11141 posts

For any UK rail journey a seat reservation is free of charge- you can make them at a staffed station or there are a couple of ways to make them on line. There are no UK rail routes where a reservation is required, although some where it is advisable, and many routes where they can't even be made- just hop on routes. Oxford to London is a route where you apparently can make reservations, but very few people do.
I, too, wouldn't use a pass day to Oxford, just buy point to point tickets. But I would use a pass day on London to Edinburgh as an example- in that case make a free reservation on LNER's own website.

I'm used to inter-railing (as we call it)/eurailing with paper tickets, not apps so that side of it is beyond me. On paper tickets you just write your journey on the back pages of the pass- very easy!!

Posted by
115 posts

Hi David, If your pass is unused and hasn’t been activated, Eurail says you can submit a refund request. If you keep it, I recall activating the day before I was going to use it. I went through a lot of this same stuff you’re mentioning a couple of years in a row ( figured I’d give it another shot…) I read everything Man in Seat 61 had, etc. I did the math beforehand and I would indeed save money. Long stretches between different countries or last minute jaunts can be worth it. This year there’s no way in the world I’d use one. There were glitches that were maddening and customer service was often unreachable when I most needed it. I’m extremely comfortable booking trains through various sites, etc and I felt my IQ was knocked down 50 points dealing with my Eurailpass. I wish I could be more specific, however I think I’ve blocked it all out for self-preservation. When it’s good it’s very good, and when it’s bad…..

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