Solved! The Problems with SNCF Connect and Ouigo Websites — and How We Buy French Train Tickets in Spite of Them

Any recent Twitter search or review of travel forums and blogs shows vast swaths of the French and foreign train-travelling public griping about the site errors that prevent them from getting information and the tickets that they want.

For example, a problem I had:

Even French people themselves have lots of trouble with the site and complain about it constantly, which is why we think our main pick above is now a better option even for them. When the changeover happened from the old dysfunctional OUI.sncf to the new and even more dysfunctional SNCF Connect in its current form, the French press recounted the lack of usability and constant promises of improvements.

I myself have frequently traveled on French trains over the past decade, and just as frequently been appalled by the problems with the SNCF websites and apps as they have gone through their various versions.

Latin American, USA, Australian, Canadian and other international credit cards are often rejected by SNCF sites; see that article for more on those issues.

As of May 2023, in my own test of the site to purchase some tickets, I got an error message using a Wise bank card from the USA on SNCF Connect; the message blamed the card for not being “set up for online purchases”. The bank card worked fine minutes later on Trainline and I was able to complete the purchase of SNCF tickets that way.

As reported here in Le Monde, since the introduction of the new SNCF Connect app and website, the errors have simply multiplied. If you can’t get these to work in English, don’t feel bad, the French social media and press are full of complaints about not being able to get the new versions to work either. Reportedly Trainline has seen a 50% boost in its French users in the immediate aftermath of the change.

Previously the SNCF’s ticket portal directed some users based on their IP locations to the much more expensive and less complete websites run by the SNCF for other countries. At last check it no longer seems to do this; one less thing to worry about. (If you do notice such an issue please let us know in the comments.) Also the SNCF’s Eurostar site was caught vastly overcharging senior citizens and young people for tickets.

There are error messages that pop up in French (no matter that you’re using the site in English), like “L’accès au service de réservation de billets de train est actuellement indisponible.” (“The access to train ticketing reservations is currently unavailable.”) Usually any trips that you have saved are then lost and you have to start over.

Google Translate offers browser extensions that can help you with reading untranslated portions of the site, and sometimes its machine translations can even be more comprehensible than the SNCF’s supposedly human-translated English version.

Here are some more error messages in English we got during our annual survey of prices of European rail booking options:

There are many other error messages, often containing no explanations, or infuriatingly vague or useless instructions.

SNCF is infamous for not providing any useful response to such customer inquiries via their website support. The only option when these things happen is generally to try back later, or, as we said up top, the private booking sites that offer the same rates.

A previous version of the SNCF website used to have a price calendar (“calendrier des prix”) that would show you the best days to travel on to get the best price. It was an extremely useful feature.

It has been disabled in the current version of SNCF Connect, which is arguably the worst thing among many with the redesign that was done. The SNCF has been promising to bring the pricing calendar back for years, and has not done so.

Fortunately, Trainline has since added this feature for any search of SNCF tickets. Search for your route for specific dates, and then click on the drop-down on the top right side for “Other days from…”. You’ll see pricing options for a few days before and after your initial search.

This can also give you a good idea of which days of the week tend to be cheapest for your route.

The language options are not at the top right of the SNCF Connect as you would find on any normal website.

This link should take you straight to the English version of SNCF Connect.

Otherwise, to choose your language, scroll down to the bottom and then back up partway through the various black footers. If you’re on the French page, just above the social media icons, you’ll see something like this:

Under “Choix du pays” (“Country choice”) there is a dropdown that says “langue” (“language”).

For English, chose “Europe (other countries)”. Even if you’re not in Europe, the website will work, though you may get credit card errors when you go to pay. And these and any other errors are likely to be in French, no matter the language you’ve chosen.

If you are using the English version of SNCF Connect and it switches over to French suddenly, it’s likely because you requested a page that does not exist in English, and so switching back to English is unlikely to do any good. You can in that case use the Google Translate extension in your browser.

You can also use the dozen or so languages over at Trainline, which works great and has flawless English.

Or you can use the Google Translate extension on your browser with the SNCF site.

I speak fluent French so the language oddities of the SNCF’s sites haven’t been a problem. But I still have had plenty of issues.

I once ended up with a ticket purchased from the SNCF website that said that it had to be withdrawn from a ticket machine in a station. But when I went, the ticket machine produced an error and was unable to print my ticket and said to see station staff. The staff was also unable to produce my ticket and said that I would have to come to the station in Nantes at 6am the next morning to speak to a manager. The manager was not to be found the next morning, and so I was issued a ticket at the counter for the non-existent train car. It was a valid ticket so I was still allowed to board the train, but this caused quite a bit of confusion for the ticket inspectors, who photographed my ticket and sent it in to the station.

On a separate incident, I was once promised at a train station that a full refund for a mistaken credit card charge from the SNCF site would be mailed to me. Instead, however, I received coupons for future train trips. I was unable to use most of them before they expired, and the so the SNCF still owes me about €160. Dearest SNCF, if you’re reading this website and you don’t like it, how about refunding me some cash? And taking care of your countless other customer complaints on Twitter and other sites?