Should I give up on Rail Europe?

This is one of the best most user friendly sites to book on multiple national European railways

https://www.trainline.eu/
Though I find trenitalia easy to use also and use both since trainline offers tickets on Italotren

Yes you should.

Yes. Why not use the national train website instead? Trenitalia is not hard to use.

That's not a common error message that anyone else has reported lately. In case you may have multiple bookings in your cart, I would close your browser window, restart, or re-link from our site if that's how you got there, to review and possibly delete some.

The cheaper fares have limited seats available, which can explain price changes. If the number of seats available at one price drops below 4, Rail Europe's shopping cart cannot mix and match different fares within your group of 4 and must change them all to the next-highest rate.

Trenitalia.com is also relatively easy to use.

@Jazz+Travels - Thank you SO much for the tip to use Trainline! It's a night and day experience from Rail Europe; so much easier to use, terms are spelled out clearly, no issues. I just booked our tickets in 15 minutes! And the best part - they were all considerably cheaper than Rail Europe. I saved over $140 on 4 short trips just in Italy. Would highly recommend them.

Well, if you had done a little research on this site prior to trying Rail Europe, you might have saved some brain damage. Rail Europe is a travel agency and not a train company. It is generally recommended that you use the national rail sites in each country. And Rail Europe does not always have tickets for every train or some of the discount tickets. If you want to schedules for nearly all trains in Europe go to dbahn.de - and then buy the ticket in the country of travel.

Go to www.seat61.com to get any European train questions answered.

Honestly try the Rail sites themselves like Trenitalia...it is very easy to use and always worked perfectly for me. There is no reason to pay the higher cost of the aggregator sites.

The fewest problems are encountered when eliminating the middle-men.

"Should I give up on Rail Europe?"

Yes yes and yes!! No reason to pay their exorbitant fees!!!

Make PDF copies of your rail tickets and email them to yourself.

Trenitalia.com Is easy to use, you get immediate confirmation, copy of your itinerary and the tickets. I had an issue (my error), contacted Trenitalia and got it resolved in minutes.

Sandy

RailEurope is a shame.
I just checked it for a trip Berlin to Amsterdam at a random date mid-September. RailEurope dares to ask USD 175, while the Deutsche Bahn has tickets from EUR 49,90!

For anyone else planning rail journeys in Italy, also check Italo:

https://www.italotreno.it/en

This is a private, high-speed rail company which services mostly larger cities. They have nice trains and offer frequently competitive rates to Trenitalia trains traveling between the same locations.

Should I just give up on them and go try to book on the Italian website (Trenitalia)?

Yes. You can also try https://www.italotreno.it/en. It is privately held rail in Italy.

And just because you book a train on RE doesn't always mean you'll actually get the train you booked...another to shun RE.

Alas, you've been taken in. You heard the name "Rail Europe," and thought this must be the official way to get tickets for trains in Europe.

Had you come here first, we all would have explained that Rail Europe does not operate any trains. They only list some trains, and the tickets they do sell can be marked up - sometimes substantially. Unless you have a specific reason to use them, avoid them.

You should always first try to buy tickets from the operator of the train. Most trains are operated by national companies (like Renfe in Spain or Bahn in Germany). Sometimes there are competitors, or private lines. For instance, Italy has the national company Trenitalia, the competitor on major routes Italo, and near Naples some service is by private line Circumvesuviana - among others. And some trains are operated by multi-national groups, like Thalys, which runs trains between the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Germany.

How to learn all about who operates what route, and where to buy tickets? Fortunately, The Man In Seat 61 has done all the figuring for you. Here's his page of where to buy tickets: https://www.seat61.com/Europe-train-tickets.htm

PS: the problem of official sounding websites that are actually not the best way to buy tickets is not just for Europe and not just for trains. Broadway dot com sure sounds official, doesn't it? Actually, it adds a huge markup per ticket (like $20 or more) to the fees already added by the legitimate ticket sellers like Telecharge and Ticketmaster.

I'll agree with Harold, except that there are entities that are the equivalent of buying from the carrier. For example, Trainline, unless they've changed their operation in the last couple of years. I used them when they were Captain Train, and it was essentially equivalent to buying from SNCF, except their web site was more user friendly than SNCF.

Robert is correct. I see I said you should first try to buy from the train operator, but omitted the part that if you have difficulty, there are some other places to purchase tickets that can still offer the official prices or only a slight markup. French rail (SNCF) and Spanish rail (Renfe) are two websites that can be tricky for US cardholders to use. Trainline is a good alternative, and for Spanish trains, people report good results with Loco2.

If you go to the Seat 61 website and look under a specific country, he has directions on how to buy tickets, including good alternative websites if you can't get the primary one to work. However, I don't think he has ever recommended Rail Europe.