pusteblume
Traveller
2 comments
Posted 14 years ago
In April, I bought the Interrail One Country Pass for France here in Italy with six travels to travel through France from the 8th of April to the 17th of April. Unfortunately there were national strikes during my whole holidays, which made it impossible for me to travel as planned and temporarily also to travel at all. That is the reason why at the end, I could only use three of my six travels that I bought, every time with a huge delay of trains and in general really umcomfortable circumstances.
That is why I wrote a letter immediately after my travel to the national train company SNCF in France asking for a reimbursement. Unfortunately, I got an answer from them just now (for sure the 60 days are exceeded now :(( ) telling me that they cannot help me since I purchased the tickets in Italy.
The Italian train company Trenitalia defends themselves since they do not want to reimburse money for a national strike of trains that occurred in France.
Does anybody of you know who exactly is responsible for such a demand of reimbursement?
Thanks a lot for your help!!
Flo
Traveller
10724 comments
Hi!
Sorry to hear that... 8)
It's quite an unique situation (and bad indeed)...I cant tell you much at the moment. As far as I know, if you are travelling with an One Country Pass you have to make complaints to the relevant country's railway - the SNCF in your case. So the reimbursement policies of the SNCF should apply for you in this case. But I dont know how they handled the strike in April - if there were any reimbursements (not only regarding InterRail) due to the strike.
Maybe I can find more info for you - in the meantime, maybe you write another mail to SNCF stating that they are the responsible carrier in this case (and not Trenitalia).
Good luck. ;)
Flo 8)
PS: The InterRail reimbursement rules say that you can claim some money back if you encountered at least three train delays of 60 minutes or more...maybe this was the case?
pusteblume
Traveller
2 comments
More than 3 train delays with more than 60minutes .. haha .. this case we had definitely!!! I am used to strikes in France but this time it was really really bad.. so formally, there is no foubt that we would be able to get a reimbursement.
I already wrote a letter to SNCF and they told me they are not responsible for my case. On the one hand I get their argument - since I didn't pay money to them for the tickets, they cannot give me money back. But I also understand the argument of Trenitalia that they won't pay for something which isn't their fault - so kind of a vicious circle :/
For now, I wrote an email to the customer service of Interrail how to handle that problem. If they cannot help me, I am gonna write again to SNCF and try - but if they take always 2 months to answer me, it's gonna take some time =)
Flo
Traveller
10724 comments
Yeah, the strike durin April was particularly bad. :((
Definitely write them again - of course you dont pay them money directly (as this is always the case with InterRail tickets) but SNCF gets of course money from the InterRail company for you using their network. So it is definitely in the responsibilty of SNCF to handle with your case.
:)
pusteblume
Traveller
2 comments
Ok .. so I am gonna try it again with SNCF .. let's hope that I get a reply until Christmas ;)