Voyages Sncf Reviews 7

Appalling confusing inconsistent website. Some pages use 24 hour clock, others use 12 hour clock which is ridiculous for a travel site. Also destination and departure not in the same order depending on which page you are on. Unnecessary confusion which could easily lead to errors. Not good enough for the 21st century SNCF.

I am native french (but living overseas) , and I have been kindly surprised of SNCF over the last years and how confort & service have been improved (english annuncment,good train). Until this week, I took the train from Mannheim to Marseille TGV 9580, on July 19th. train was ok except the booking information not displayed on the screen as well as the coach number not appearing (creating a big mess: everybody was trying to find the coach number).SNCF agents coud have displayed a paper with the coach number to help locate our coach. Anyway, the worst thing was the " no toilets available" . neither on the top or on the bottom of the train (it was a 8-hour journey). I sat on coach #18, and the only functional toilets were in coach13. There was no agent from SNCF to talk to. The bar tender on coach #13 told us he was not working for SNCF, but for a private company. Finally after 4 hours we met an agent and this agent had no solution to bring. Only to tell us that it was because many people used the toilets (WHAT!!!!????)... 10 toilets or more being full.train are not designed for the number of seats??.. I guess maintenance has not been done and toilets have not been emptied;. that was the real problem! Anyway, as expected, one person in bad health could not walk to cach #13 and poo in his pant..; and we got poo smell for 7 hours... train was full, so we could not change of seats... Beautiful travel with SNCF. I suggest to fly or take a bus (much less expensive), quicker sometimes and better experience overall.

These trains are wonderful until something goes wrong, and then the memory of luxury is replaced by the ongoing bureaucratic hell.

tl;dr - NEVER EVER order tickets by post, because they will make a mess of it, and you will not be able to prove it was their fault.

My problem with these folks started when I was so foolish as to order tickets per post to travel Geneva-Barcelona on 2 Jan 2017. The tickets did not arrive in time (in fact, my mother at home received them on 4. Jan 2017, 2 days after the train departed).

No problem, they told me at the Geneva office on January 2, so long as I was prepared to buy 2 new tickets at the same price, they would refund me the old tickets, as soon as I posted them in.
So, I coughed up more hundreds of Euros, got on the train and made a note to myself.

The train was fine, but the refund has become an ongoing nightmare.
The chaos began. I was fortunate that the tickets eventually arrived at my house, and after a lengthy correspondence, I sent in scanned versions of the new tickets, the original tickets, all the receipts and covering letters etc. And of course I (in fact, my mother) posted in the originals. In a moment of madness I did not use registered post for the ticket postage, and so when the original tickets went missing somewhere... well, who knows? Maybe it was in the Spanish postal system (I was dealing with the Barcelona office) or maybe my tickets are in the Voyages-SNCF office recycling bin, uninspected. Of course, I can't prove it either way: I can't prove that it is my fault their bureaucratic requirements for a refund are not fulfilled and I can't get my money back because *they* originally messed up posting me the tickets in a timely fashion, nor can I ever know if the tickets are now missing because of a genuine postal mistake, or because they gleefully burn all tickets which arrive without a proof-of-delivery.

In short, I am angry - they failed to deliver me tickets on time, then made it my job to prove it. I understand the logic of the system, but if this system is so fragile that this kind of problem can arise, they should not be selling tickets through the post.

I tried hard to order TGV tickets from this company, but its website is extraordinarily unfriendly. I tried calling the contact phone numbers . . . but there was no help in English. I bought my tickets elsewhere.

There are severe problems with en.voyages-sncf.com’s service. I have used Rail Europe (their predescessor) many times in the past, however their new incarnation, en.voyages-sncf.com, appears to be very badly run.

Issue: I had booked 2 tickets Girona-Perpignan online a couple of months ago.
1. When I tried to log in today to change to another date, could not do so despite requesting new password etc 5 times. Poor website
2. Phoned (call lasted over 20 mins) and was told to go to ‘Other countries” section of their website.
3. Tried in vain.
4. Phoned again, call lasted over 30 minutes. Paid a fee to change ticket £18 (fair enough the early bird tickets probably all gone).
5. Plus had to pay £2.25 postage as they could not email the ticket, despite the fact that I was calling about an e-ticket. Annoying.
6. Could not finish the transaction because their system, I was told, was blocking the issue of the ticket. Was told that I would be called back. This was 12.30.
7. Heard nothing, telephoned again at 3.30.
8. Third phone call: It lasted for 18 minutes. They did not seem to know what had been going on so I explained again. After that, still no joy, and refund will take up to 2 months. Not even sure if they will refund today’s transaction.
All in all, I would NOT recommend this company until they sort out their systems. I wasted a lot of time today because of a badly run business.

I was very worried about not being able to travel on the date I required. Now I have gone onto the French SNCF website ( in French but not too difficult to navigate) and booked 2 more tickets.
I wil say that staff really tried but were hampered by a a very poor computer system.
Better safe than sorry!