ASUDan130

Hello,

I am looking to just change the date of a German Rail Ticket I bought online. Is theres like there is a 15 Euro fee for this? Or is this just the fee to cancel the ticket. When I tried to exchange it there residual fare was not being applied to the new ticket price. So I wasn't sure what to do. Any ideas?

KQ321

What sort of fare do you have? Is it a SparPreis? If so, AFAIK, there is a €15 fee to cancel (as long as it's done at least one day before departure), but no option to change the date. So, if you want to change the date, you need to cancel the first ticket (for which you will be refunded what you paid, less €15) and buy a new one (at whatever the price is at the time you book).

However, I haven't had to do this for a while, so perhaps someone with more recent experience can advise?

bruce80

If you have a Sparpreis ticket, you'll indeed have to cancel the old one (at a EUR 15 cancellation fee) and DB will refund you via the channel used to buy the ticket (for example, if you used your CC to pay for the ticket, they will credit your CC account). Then you'd have to buy a new ticket for the new date (which, depending on the circumstances, may be cheaper or more expensive than your original ticket).

However, if you hold a flexible ticket ("Normalpreis"), there's no cancellation fee if the cancellation is made before the first day of the ticket's validity. The process will be the same as described above (apart from the refund fee).

In the case of a Normalpreis ticket, please note that the outbound part will not only be valid for the day you initially selected, but also for the next day, and you don't have to change the ticket at all if you only want to postpone your trip by one day. The return part (if you did book a return ticket) is even valid for an entire month after the first day of your initially selected outbound journey, so you can choose your return travel date within this entire period.

Hence, especially for Normalpreis tickets, it is generally advisable to buy return tickets (if there's a chance that you'll have to change your plans before the journey starts) as you'll be more flexible with them (one month of return validity vs. two days compared to a single-trip ticket). And if there's a chance that you'd have to cancel/change the entire trip (i.e. both outbound and return legs), it's also a good idea to buy a return when using Sparpreis, as you'll only have to pay the EUR 15 cancellation fee once.

KQ321

Update: it seems the standard DB cancellation fee is now €17.50 (not €15 as it was previously...)