Booking rail tickets at www.trenitalia.com

Sheep Shagger

Has anyone successfully been able to do this using an irish card.

It doesn't seem to want to accept my BOI Mastercard as payment despite there being no restrictions on using non italian cards on the website (from what I can see anyway).

fricatus

Yeah, I did - with an AIB VISA - although it was about five years ago now, and anything could have changed in the meantime.

Maybe take note of what error you're getting and contact your bank?

If you can get it to work, it's a great way to buy your ticket. They text you a reference, and that's what you show to the railway staff. Light years ahead of Iarnród Éireann!

schemingbohemia

fricatus wrote: »

If you can get it to work, it's a great way to buy your ticket. They text you a reference, and that's what you show to the railway staff. Light years ahead of Iarnród Éireann!

As opposed to IE who email you your reference number so that you can pick up the ticket yourself from any automatic ticket machine in the country? Not sure that it's so much better.

See below for info, apparently trenitalia have 'issues' with some non-italian cards - could you try a different card?

http://www.seat61.com/Italy-trains.htm#How%20to%20use%20Trenitalia.com

The only catch: www.trenitalia.com struggles with UK & overseas credit cards
A significant proportion of UK & other non-Italian credit cards don't seem to work on trenitalia.com.

I guestimate from the emails I receive that Trenitalia.com accepts around 60% of UK credit cards (rejecting 40%), and accepts 20-30% of US & Australian cards, rejecting 70-80% of them. Non-Italian Amex cards certainly will not work.

Why is this? I'm told that Trenitalia isn't properly updating its website with the full range of world credit card BIN numbers, so it recognises cards with a BIN in some number ranges, but not others. BIN = Bank Identification Number, the first 5 digits of your credit card number.

When people call Trenitalia's telesales line they are often (wrongly) told that Trenitalia.com doesn't accept non-Italian cards at all, but it certainly does. I buy all my own tickets at trenitalia.com, both my UK-issued credit cards work.

Check with your bank: If your card doesn't work, it's sometimes because your bank (rather than Trenitalia) has blocked the transaction as possible fraud on a foreign website. Call your bank and ask them to unblock Trenitalia.com for you. In fact, it can be a good idea to call you bank before using Trenitalia.com.

A second transaction may not work, even if your first transaction is successful: Even if your car works for one transaction, Trenitalia often block cards for a second transaction made soon after the first (meaning a few hours or a day or two). So book all your tickets as one transaction if you can to avoid this problem, or use another credit card for the second transaction, or wait a few weeks. Trenitalia.com allows up to 4 journeys to be added to your shopping trolley and paid for as one transaction.

You can contact Trenitalia's web team at areaclienti@trenitalia.it to unfreeze frozen accounts and so forth. They can handle emails in English.

So which cards work & which don't? Please tell me if your card works or doesn't work (especially if you're US, Canadian, Australian or NZ)
Credit cards reported as working...
UK cards: My own UK-issued First Direct Visa card has always worked fine on Trenitalia, and my John Lewis MasterCard works fine too. First Direct Visa, Egg MasterCard, Co-Operative Bank Visa (1 report), NatWest Visa (2 reports), NatWest MasterCard (3 reports), HSBC Visa debit, Nationwide Visa (1 report), Alliance & Leicester Visa debit, RBS Visa, Barclays Visa debit (1 report), Lloyds MasterCard, llyods TSB, Saga Platinum Visa, Post Office MasterCard, Barclaycard Platinum Visa, Capital One, Marks&Spencer MasterCard (2 reports), Tesco MasterCard, Yorkshire Bank Visa, Halifax Visa.

US & Canadian cards: US Citibank Visa, Target National Bank Visa, Chase United Mileage Plus (after advising bank), Synovus Visa, Canadian CIBC Visa (2 reports), Canadian RBC Visa (1 report), Canadian Royal Bank Visa, Wells Fargo Visa (after clearing trenitalia with the bank first), British Airways Chase Visa, US Capital One MasterCard (tell Cap One first). Looks like the Canadians are more successful than those from the US!

Australian, NZ & other cards: NZ Kiwibank MasterCard (2 reports), BNZ Visa Gold (2 reports) (seems like the Kiwis are doing better than the Aussies here...).

South African FNB Visa, Hong Kong CITI Bank premiermiles Visa.

Credit cards reported as not working...
UK cards: No Amex card will work, Co-Operative Bank Visa (1 report), Nationwide Visa (2 reports), Abbey-MNBA Visa, Abbey MasterCard, BA Amex, Halifax MasterCard, Citibank Visa, Smile Visa Debit, BT Visa, Lloyds TSB Visa, Virgin Mastercard, Barclaycard Goldfish MasterCard, Barclays Visa debit (1 report), Virgin Mastercard, LloydsTSB Visa (2 reports), HSBC Maestro, HSBC Visa credit, MBNA Platinum.
US & Canadian cards: No Amex cards work. Bank of America Visa (3 reports), New Hampshire Fed Credit Visa, USAA MasterCard (2 reports), Capital One MasterCard, Chase MasterCard, Chase Visa, Marriot Chase Visa, PC Financial MasterCard, Bank of America Visa.

Australian, NZ & other cards: No Amex cards will work. Westpac Visa & Mastercard, NAB Visa (2 reports), Bank SA Visa, Commonwealth Bank Visa & Mastercard, St George Bank Visa, ANZ Visa, Citibank Visa, Swiss UBS Visa.

There seems to be very little pattern to which cards work and which don't, as some cards get reported as both working and not working! It's likely to do with the various banks' BIN ranges (BIN = Bank Identification Number, the first 5 digits of your card number).

Solutions..?
Solution for UK travellers: Take out a pre-paid euro currency card from CaxtonFX, as these cards have been reported by 1 correspondent to work on Trenitalia.com (though another report says it didn't). These cards are a good idea anyway, as you save money on your travels with no ATM fees and a guaranteed exchange rate. Sign up for a CaxtonFX card here. Seat61 gets a small amount of commission if you get one of these cards.

Solution for US American Express cardholders: Contact the Amex office in Milan, they will arrange tickets for you at Trenitalia prices. Contact details.

Solution for Australian travellers: A suggestion from an Australian user whose card wouldn't work is to take out a pre-paid Visa debit card in euro denominations. Even using one provided by an Australian bank, this worked and tickets were successfully bought online.

If Trenitalia.com really won't accept any of your credit cards, buy your Italian train tickets from the relevant Rail Europe website: www.raileurope.co.uk (for UK residents), www.raileurope.com (for US residents), www.raileurope.ca (Canadian residents), www.raileurope.com.au (Australia), www.raileurope.co.nz (New Zealand), www.raileurope.co.in (India), www.raileurope.com.sg (Singapore), www.raileurope.co.za (South Africa). These sites will charge you the fully-flexible fare (they can't sell the Trenitalia 15%, 30% or 60% discounts) plus usually a postage or booking fee. Rail Europe may not have every Italian train or route programmed into its system, only the main ones.

Sheep Shagger

Thanks for that, finally managed to get it to work with my Visa card (originally tried Mastercard).

My visa card has a password attached to it (that they ask for during the payment process) whilst my MC doesn't (not exactly sure why).

I tried Rail Europe but the tkts were dearer...all sorted now, Thanks all