On bookings and extra costs - Interail experience thread

[whole diary]

[grahame]

A study of passengers and ticketing and other customer experiences.

OK - I'm an enthusiast for rail and not a rail enthusiast - so my study here is of the "softer" stuff as I head around on my Interrail pass - 50% off in a "fire sale" earlier this year which means a unique opportunity.

On Booking and costs

The pass includes a single transit out of the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) and a single transit in; it's said to (and sold to) include almost all rail journeys, but in practise some trains (all the expresses on some routes) require reservations, for which there's a fee. And I believe that some operators limit the number of seats that can be reserved by pass holders on certain trains.

And so ... my plan to start on Tuesday morning on the 05:33 and get a really long way that day was thwarted, and I found myself catching the 12:33 to connect with the only Eurostar availability I could find, which was the 16:31.  Ding - 10 pounds.  And, ding, 20 pounds for my onward train from Paris to Latour-du-Carol, the overnight service and I almost missed THAT.   Ding 1.90 Euros for the Metro across Paris; London transit dingless because the pass is valid on the Overground (including Crossrail) and Thameslink, thus the Farringdon dogleg.

Onward train from Latour-du-Carol to Ribes did not require reservation, Ding 25 Euros for the connection on to Nuia (and return) then into Barcelona without issue.  Found myself trapped behind the gates; not the same staffing level as at placed like Paddington but in the end a surly gentleman let me out. 

The Interrail site tells you that you need to have a reservation on most high speed trains, and planning to catch the 09:30 this morning I thought it sensible to book last night. Oh dear!   They have a ticketing system where you get a numbered service ticket from a machine in order to speak to a member of staff from whom you can get a reservation.   Good grief I wish that were possible online.  The numbers moved up painfully slowly.  Around half the windows were open, and the staff behind them chatted away looking very relaxed between customers. Indeed, the wait was so long that at times more windows were waiting for someone to come up - and often those people had given up.  EVENTUALLY! - service, less than a minute and DING - 10 Euros.

Walked to my hotel. My error of choice, it was too far.  Metro back this morning, ding 2.40 euros.

I'm on that (main line) train now - the tickets and enquires desk inside security at Barcelona Sants couldn't sell me tomorrow's reservation and told me I could go back out to get it;  not enough time, so I will try at destination tonight. Fingers crossed.

The Interail web site is a wonder to help with international timings - perhaps more  about that as I get further into it.   And I'm using hotels.com to find places ahead - a room awaits me tonight, and one the following night.  Just needs the Spanish, who a get the feeling resent Interail travellers (I seem to have what must be the worst seat in the carriage!) to march with to the same tune as the English, the French, and as far as I can see the other nations involved.

[Worcester_Passenger]

We've just come back from a long round London - Paris - Albertville (French Alps) - Milan - Trieste - Ljubljana - Budapest - Munich - Paris - London.  That would have been a natural for Interrail, but we would have been paying extra for most of it (London - Paris - Bellegarde, Chambery - Milan - Venice and Munich - Paris - London) so I did separate tickets instead. Unsure whether that was cheaper or not. Certainly gave access to 'proper' trains.

Booking the train from Trieste to Ljubljana was a bit special.  The Italian website only mentioned two trains, early morning and late afternoon.  I was convinced there ought to be another in the middle of the day. The Slovenian website said this was an international journey and redirected me to the German website, who had the train but wouldn't sell me a ticket. Eventually got the ticket out of the Austrians (oebb.at).  And indeed, this was an Austrian train - big Taurus loco and three Austrian coaches (photo attached). It changed loco at the Slovenian border (28 minutes). At Ljubljana it added three Slovenian coaches and went on to Vienna.  It's the last vestige of the Austrian Suedbahn, which connected Vienna to its port at Trieste - has no-one told OEBB about the demise of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918?

[grahame]

On bookings and extra costs - I was dinged a further 10 euros to travel the 140kms (just 95kms as the crow flies) from Leon to Oviedo on Friday morning (remember I have paid the equivalent of a European All Line Rover) but since then I have been able to travel free [of surcharges] if not freely jumping onto trains. 

Main line trains here - including the intermediate distance regional ones - are "reservation only" and there gets to be something of a routine in approaching the ticket desk and asking for a reservation (and routinely getting an aisle seat ...) but a least yesterdays and today's (I will be hitting "Post" on Sunday) didn't have the extra cost.  In the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), I would be asking the question "but what if I don't know which trains I'll be catching", but here in Galacia trains are so infrequent that's not an option.   Yesterday morning, I left Ferrol on the 08:40 to A Coruna, and had I missed it my next train would have been the 15:10 (destination Madrid) and then th final train of the day was the 19:30 also to A Coruna.   To  give you an idea, the population of Ferrol is around 65,000 and it DOES also have those 2 metre gauge trains a day back over to Oviedo, and some local services on the metre gauge too which start (I think) as frequently as hourly from Ferrol but most turn back before too long - just 4 get to Ribadeo and 2 past there.

On the metre gauge, the don't do reservations but at the main stations they have ultra-modern barriers and their ticket desks "like" to issue encoded cards to pass the gates, or to give some sort of authority.  As an Interail pass holder I was something of a novelty on the commuter elements of the service, with the lady who issued my ticket at Oviedo coming out from her office to see me though the gate and show me platform 4 (it was obvious - the one with a big "4" sign ...) and at Alvies the young lady on the gate (I came off one train and dropped back to another) escorting me to the ticket office, helping try (!) to work out what to do with me - ("I and my colleagues have only been here since August and never seen one of these before") and being unable to wok out their own system advised me to ask at my next change at Pravia.  Where, I add, the ticket desk was closed and the staff more concerned that I caught the right train than about my ticket.

On that final leg from Flavia to San Xoan, the train manager who eventually checked tickets wanted to double check that I really was going to San Xoan to advise the driver - a bit like a tourist getting the last train of the day to Dilton Marsh and he wanted to be sure (but then if I had a hotel booked in Dilton Marsh, that would have been right!)



 

[rogerpatenall]

All European operators seem to be going the same way. My local trains between Cherbourg (Valognes) and Paris are slow. But previously you could turn up or you could make a free reservation and choose your seat. Now, new trains - still desperately slow but with compulsory reservations with no apparent means of changing your allocated seat however early you book.