g46r

No kidding! I have been running into the same problem trying to book an SJ ticket from Stockholm to Copenhagen for days! Neither my Chase United Club visa card, my BoA Mastercard, nor my Fidelity branded Amex card worked. The only card that worked was the Costco Amex card (in that case the issuing bank is Amex itself, unlike the Fidelity branded Amex card which is actually issued by BoA's MBNA division).

Thank you FT for this expert knowledge. Saved me a lot of grief.

mixmastermark

SOLUTION -- Use the SJ app from your phone!

APP
I was able to successfully purchase SJ train tickets with an American credit card (FINALLY) by downloading and using the SJ app on my iPhone. The process is easier and much better designed than the website.

WEBSITE
I had no luck on the SJ trains website and tried multiple credit cards. When I finally reached customer service employee (via online webchat), I fed them the trip details, only for them to conclude by sending a payment link to the same portal from the website... which failed again.

PHONE
I read that you could call them, but when I tried to call, I was behind 149 other people in queue. If you want to try, their phone number from the US is +46 77 175 75 75 (let the prompt play, then it will switch to English) and note that their call center hours are limited (opens 9AM Swedish time).

OMIO or HAPPYRAIL
If you still want to book online, it appears that one can also buy SJ train tickets from either omio.com or happyrail.com. I opted not use them because it would not allow me to choose my seats, instead they offer you a seat preference window/aisle/table, etc while seating you together with your party. Prices were roughly similar to SJ's website, with a higher processing fee, but nowhere nearly as expensive as RailNinja

Hope this helps others struggling with SJ's train ticketing website.

GUWonder

I’ve used various US bank cards to buy tickets via the SJ iOS app. Works very smoothly for me. It even works more smoothly with my US bank cards than it may with some Swedish bank cards, since there could be a BankID-type inhibitor involved for at least some of those using Swedish bank cards for SJ ticket purchases.

pseudoswede

This summer, pretty much any credit card I throw at SJ's website gets rejected now--regardless if I try in the US or Sweden. Only by pure luck does a transaction go through after 10-15 attempts. This also happened when trying to buy bus tickets (bus4you.se) and amusement part tickets (liseberg.se). I also confirmed with the credit card companies (Citi Costco Visa and Chase United Mileage Plus Explorer Visa) that they never received a transaction request. It's just easier to ask my father-in-law to buy the tickets, and we Swish him the money.

The only commonality I've seen is that these sites use paynova.com as the clearinghouse. If I had the energy, I would register a complaint with them and ask them to figure out why US-based credit cards are not consistently accepted.

GUWonder

Did you try to use Amex?

Isn’t Swish still limited to only those with Swedish bank accounts?

pseudoswede

I have a no annual fee Amex that doesn't offer no forex fees, so I left it at home.

Swish is still limited to Swedish bank accounts, but Mrs. Swede was able to link it to her US phone number.

Again, I think the main issue is with the e-commerce clearinghouses that some of these companies use.

GUWonder

Linking to foreign phone numbers I knew about, but linking to non-Swedish bank accounts would have been news to me. [Due to FATCA and some other things, US persons keeping a bank or other financial accounts in Sweden — even as a Swedish citizen — is something some give up upon coming under US/Treasury/IRS jurisdiction. ]

A lot of companies in the online realm in Sweden seem to have picked up card processing partners that do pose more of a problem for non-European cards than for European cards. And sometimes they change card processing partners on the front or back-end and then it’s back to playing card roulette. Sometimes what doesn’t work the first time then works a few minutes later. I’m pretty sure that my US Amex cards have been the cards that I’ve used for most of my SJ purchases during at least the last couple of years. But that’s via the SJ app. The website could be a different story.

pseudoswede

Another year, same ol' stuff.

None of my credit cards with no forex fees work on SJ's website or the app.

An older thread on Trip Advisor suggested using https://www.snalltaget.se/en but that also didn't work. I could try via PayPal, but I would need to add a credit card.

Chatting with SJ, they recommended https://www.omio.com (which I guess used to be goeuro.com?), which actually worked, but it is about a 7% mark-up compared to SJ's website/app. While I'll accept that for a one-off trip, I need to buy 23-27 more tickets across five trips!

GUWonder

Still don’t have a “no forex fee” Amex? Such US Amex’s work to buy SJ tickets on the SJ smartphone apps. Even the forex fee charging Amex cards work out better this way too than with the 7% mark up thing you used.

I also buy Snalltaget train tickets with US Amex cards on the SJ smartphone apps.

pseudoswede

Nope. I was forced to product change to a no annual fee Amex since Fidelity stopped offering branded Amex cards. But very true, SJ does offer a USD option which is surprisingly close to the daily spot rate.

pseudoswede

Using a Visa at the SJ kiosk is fine.

If traveling between Gothenburg and Copenhagen (or points between), booking directly with Öresundståg will allow you to use Visa (and most likely MasterCard). If traveling around Gothenburg, Västtrafik's app works great with Visa.

If traveling around Stockholm, the SL app did not work with Visa. I didn't bother with Amex since I was already at Stockholm C.

I'm probably going to start a thread in the Nordic Countries forum on websites/apps that don't accept Visa/MasterCard.

GUWonder

The Skanetrafiken app works to get Oresundstag electronic tickets to use to go between Gothenburg and Copenhagen. And the app usually works with my US Chase Visa cards to get those tickets. The Skanetrafiken kiosks at Gothenburg Central and elsewhere in Sweden (inside Skane but also the other regions served by Oresundstag) work fine for me with US Visa bank cards and US Mastercards. The Skanetrafiken machines in Denmark work fine for me with at least the US Visa bank cards.

The SL app has worked with my US bank cards too, and I am pretty sure I used it with at least one of my US Visa bank cards among some other US bank cards. I also do use US Chase Visa bank cards’ contactless feature directly at the gates to take the SL trains and subways and at the front of the buses in Stockholm.

The SJ app works to buy SJ and Snalltaget tickets using our US Amex cards — at least the vanilla consumer Platinum and Centurion ones.