Originally Posted by
Mountain Trader
In any event, someone should point FIA to this and encourage them to follow-up. If their cards do not work, while other US issued cards do, I would think that would be of concern to them.
FIA KNOWS but claim they CHOOSE to not participate.
BTW, I have found in every case I have tried that buying tickets from the local rail company was never more expensive than Rail Europe and is often cheaper, sometimes dramatically so.
Right you are!
This may help others who are in need to buy train tickets with Renfe either they need local train tickets or they want to leap the advance purchase deep discount.
Though the post may be better suited to Travel forum. TripAdvisor Madrid Forum has a very detailed STICKY that anyone needs to use Renfe should spend some time to read and understand it.
FIA cards definitely do not participate Visa Verified, and the reps told me even the BofA cards, they believe only the debit cards participated. I do not have BofA card so no idea. Capital One Mastercards participate in MC's securecoded, but Citicards do not. AMEX is completely out of the picture.
This seems to be the trend for many European online purchases - that the CCs must be registered with one or the other "security verification" program in order to be accepted for transaction.
About why not use Rail Europe to buy tickets.
Rail Europe may not even sell local train tickets for one thing. For another, it sells tickets at FULL prices which can be more than doubled than advance purchase prices.
During peak season or festival times such as the Holy Week or April Fair, local trains can be full. I was forced to give up a scheduled stay at Ronda in Andalusia because the daily 4 trains from Granada to Ronda were initially blocked for my date, and then when it finally unblocked, it was FULL. No train. By bus it would be a convoluted routing - Granada to Malaga 2 hours bus and then Malaga to Ronda 3 hours bus because this section is ALL very mountainous winding roads, versus the train is less than 3 hours train ride.
Because of that I had to scrape Ronda from the itinerary and thankfully the hotel booking was cancelable though I lost a $50 Expedia coupon on that. Now we will take an ALSA bus from Granada to Seville instead, and I booked the last room available on Booking.com that was below 100 euro on that night - actually is a one-bedroom apartment across the river from the Golden Tower. Else the town is almost sold out until you go up to 250 to 350 Euro till Good Friday.
FWIW, this year's April Fair actually starts from May 3rd, probably due to Holy Week is so close to end of April (18th to 24th).
The AVE can be discounted by 60% on some routes - like the Cordoba to Madrid the discounted advance purchase web fares on some time slots are only 27 euro versus what you would need to pay on Rail Europe at 70 euro. So if you dont want to be bothered by Renfe's nuttiness you can certainly buy it from Rail Europe but pay double or more. These are the options. There are 2 other sites seem to sell Renfe tickets with commission, one has English and the other is strictly Spanish - they are
http://petrabax.com/ and
http://negocios.rumbo.es/?utm_source...ner-header-top They directly pull info from Renfe own site, so if Renfe shows no train, they show the same. Although reportedly one can use a Non-verified Visa or Non-coded MC to make purchase, and pay the commission of about 5 to 7% I believe, still far cheaper than Rail Europe which in many cases are rip-offs to the Americans and Canadians.
For those who said they could buy tickets in the past with their US-issued cards no issue - it is no longer true - UNLESS your card is registered for Visa Verified, or Mastercard securecoded program. All other cards would get an error message and transaction failed. In fact, even if the card is a Visa verified, when Visa Verified tried to communicate with your bank and your bank happens to have scheduled maintenance at the time, the transaction failed. This happened to me last night when Chase was on scheduled maintenance, but the transaction went through when Chase went back up after 2PM today.
According to Chase, the Visa Verified is a totally separate verification program which first verified the card is authentic, then send the info to the bank just as we normally make an online purchase. The bank then let the authorization go through and bounce back to the merchant.
During my attempt to purchase, Chase was not fully functional, so the transaction despite being verified by the program, it failed. Chase did not even see the authorization while Visa Verified Manage My Account shows Renfe authorized. The linkage broke so the transaction failed.
I re-tried after Chase went back up this afternoon at 3:30PM and the transaction sailed through after the card was verified by the program.
So when you are ready to purchase, not only your card should be already a registered one, but also check your issuer to make sure their system is running normally to avoid headache.
It is too bad that Citi does not participate in Mastercard securecoded.