A word about Rail Europe

I recently had some problems with tickets purchased through Rail Europe, although the segments were in Italy not Switzerland. Rather than allowing me to print out a ticket at home, I was given a code that I had to enter into the automatic ticket dispensers in Italy which would then print my ticket out. The first time, in Como, it worked after a couple unsuccessful attempts. But later in Florence and Milan the machines refused to recognize the code. So I had to stand in the "help" line (which was long) and get told that my receipt (which clearly said it was not a ticket) could be used as a ticket. Of course, once on the trains (the FS high speed trains) nobody checked tickets anyway. But it was a pain. Interestingly, one of my traveling companions had also bought tickets through Rail Europe and had been allowed to print out the ticket before leaving the U.S. So perhaps some kind of change is in mid cycle.

Of course that was Italy, and those sorts of things are expected. In Switzerland I would expect it to work like...well....clockwork.

JBWX



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2014 07:29PM by John West.