Originally Posted by
Thorgils
I have a similar (but somewhat different) issue from those discussed in this thread, and would welcome any advice from people experienced in making French rail bookings from the US.
I want to book 3 rail journeys on the Voyages-sncf website. Only one of them qualifies for an "e-ticket." For the other two, I can pick up at a station or have the tickets mailed to me. Using either a machine or a ticket office at the station would require me to have a PIN for my card, according to SNCF, and since my preferred (Chase) card has no PIN, I need the tickets to be mailed to me.
That's not at all true. I regularly use pin-less cards both online, with the iPhone app, and at human staffed SNCF ticket offices. You only need a pin card for the non-human ticket machines.
The opening SNCF booking screen asks for the "distribution country," and if one chooses "USA" one is routed to Rail-Europe. No, thank you. If I choose "Other countries (Euro)" I can continue with the SNCF booking. However, at the check-out stage, when one is asked for an address, the drop-down list of countries appears to include every country in the world with the singular exception of the US.
I'm not sure where you are seeing this? I never put in my address. If you choose station pickup, then your address doesn't matter.