Howdy all. Well today I want to talk about one of the negatives I experienced whilst on my three month trip not so long ago this year, and that was the website/company trainline.com. Where to start?

I should start positively I guess. I booked a number of my trains through Europe on their website, and when it worked, it worked well. However, there is one element which has proven frustrating to say the least, and that’s getting a refund from them.

The website came recommended from seat61.com, a wonderful website for those who love travel in all different parts of the world, so I thought I was onto a winner here. Why did I use it? Well it’s a website that allows you to buy tickets in various different countries and mercifully in English. For example the French train company is SNCF and they have their own website, exclusively in French. Renfe is the Spanish rail company and their website is exclusively in, you guessed it, in Spanish. Which is fine really I could have navigated those websites as I went along but when you go from one country to another to another, it’s easier to go to a website that does what Trainline.com does – they buy the tickets for you. Presumably having deals with the companies and taking a cut of the ticket price paid.

So anyways, one of my bookings took me from Nice in France to Barcelona in Spain. It was one of the most critical days of travel booked for the whole trip because I had my train from Barcelona to Algeciras booked for the following day, meeting up with my mate Graham in Barcelona, so I had to make it to Barcelona on THAT day.

So I booked it via Trainline. The best I could manage was Nice to Marseille, Marseille to Beziers and Beziers to Barcelona, three trains where you might have thought there would be value on a direct service. Leaving at 12pm or so from Nice. Getting into Barcelona Sants Station at 930pm. All was going well to plan, I arrived at Nice from Florence, with a full day and two nights there, and then I received an email from SNCF (NOT Trainline) that the third of my trains was cancelled.

The email was in French, but I understand enough French to comprehend it. I wasn’t 100% sure but from my grasp of the language the reason was because of some kind of strike, which is sadly a common thing in France. I tried to collect a refund via SNCF online and at Nice train station with no luck whatsoever I was told – get your refund from Trainline.

Well, let’s see how that went. As of early July here, the ticket was cancelled 31^st March for the 2^nd of April, I am YET TO RECEIVE my refund. I’ll be honest with ya. Not happy. Why have I not received a refund? Well, the policy they run is they will only give you a refund once they have received it from SNCF. Why it takes SNCF so long to refund them I don’t know because if you have an SNCF ticket and require a legitimate refund for a train they will give it to you on the spot if you booked it through them.

The cost of that one train ticket was 91 Euro, to me that’s not small potatoes and I have been in an email tug of war over this now since April. I believe if you sell the ticket you stand by your product. They should refund the money and seek it from SNCF. If they struggle as they claim they do to get refunds quickly from SNCF, they need to fix that up. Sadly I see om Trip Advisor I am not the only one with this experience.

The emails I receive keep explaining to me they are waiting for SNCF and they know it’s frustrating but I need to be patient. I think 4 months is enough patience when I forked out money to them and received no product. It’s a valuable lesson though, and I strongly advise booking direct with SNCF or other European rail companies where possible. This is dreadful customer service – I have no received any updates, I only receive emails when I email them as a response. It’s the same stone walling response every time. It’s a sign of the times perhaps but also so frustrating almost deliberately so in the hope that you will get so over it all you won’t bother following up.

I’ll let you know how it goes if I ever see my 91 Euro that feels stolen from comes back, or as may well be the case, not. In the meantime, I would advise against Trainline.com. Thanks for reading today. Take care wherever you are in the world and May the Journey Never End!