Im a new user

It should be possible to buy tickets to/from Emmerich(Gr) and Bad Bentheim(Gr) at a ticket office. The "(Gr)" part indicates that it's not a real station but a fictive station at the actual border. If you drop (Gr) from the station name, then the price will go up minimally as the ticket also will include a minimal distance in Germany.

Concerto

I have been using Sparpreis (saver) tickets from Germany to Switzerland for years. The beauty of them is that while you have take the specific trains you book within Germany, the moment you cross the Swiss border the ticket is fully flexible. So I can make a pause of a few hours in Basel and continue later. Or stop at home in Montreux then continue the next day to Sion. Of course, these tickets are valid for only 3 days now, having previously been valid for 14 days, 1 month, 2 months.

Had something changed? Does the Zugbindung apply to Swiss trains as well as German ones now, even though it is a ticket issued by DB? Some Swiss controlers seemed to think the ticket was not really valid, others said it was fine. As usual, nobody seems to know and certainly, if the rules changed, nobody told me. Could it have something to do with the Super Sparpreis concept?

speed.skater

Yes, the relevant ToS have been changed some time ago. I believe you speak German, so you may check post #8 on this site.

Concerto

Thanks very much for that link. I am wading through the posts bit by bit (while doing something else) and it's still not hugely clear. The response in post 12 (to that of post 11) seems to indicate that there is no Zugbindung in Switzerland:

...da der Intercity erst in Basel SBB startet, ist dieser nicht innerhalb einer grenzüberschreitenden Reise unterwegs. Somit besteht auch ab Basel SBB keine Zugbindung. Dies gilt sowohl für den Super Sparpreis Europa Schweiz als auch den Sparpreis Europa Schweiz.

But looking at the conditions through the link in post 19...

https://www.bahn.de/p/view/home/agb/...T-ANSW-DB_LZ01

...and finding the right document, couldn't find point 3.7 as suggested...

https://www.bahn.de/p/view/mdb/bahni...15_07_2019.pdf

...the text in points 5.8.2 and 5.8.5 seem to clearly state the the Zugbindung applies only to the DB portions of the trip, i.e. the part of the journey in Germany before the border, obviously on an IC or ICE train (given that you can't get a Sparpreis on other trains).

Anyway, it's a bit complicated and you won't want to be bothered with the details (this is more for a German language blog like VFT), so I will just study it in more detail and reread the conditions.

EDIT - I see further down in the blog posts in the link you gave me that the rule changed on 1st October 2018. They really have tightened the nooses so much on international tickets!

FlyerTalker324193

You're gonna have big fun riding the train in Germany these days as the engineers are on strike.

enelym1978

oh yeah i was caught in it yesterday.... and i was not informed automatically, lucky I just checked the timetable in the morning, just had enough time to run to the station here in Switzerland to check my options and managed to get to Stuttgart from Basel. 2nd class was full and packed, 1st class was still ok.

Good luck to anyone having to take trains until tomorrow 2AM....

mlin32

For those travelling by train in Germany : there is another strike proposed for Monday-Tuesday next week (23-24/08) which will strongly impact train services (the last strike impacted 75% of long-distance services).

Concerto

Although I had a 1st class ticket to Switzerland, I cashed it in and got myself an award flight ticket with miles, although via Copenhagen. Ticket counter staff told me it would be a total mess and I wouldn't make it to Basel that day.

mlin32

Now that the strike has begun, the impacts are more clearly defined for the next couple days:

75% long distance trains cancelled.
Most regional trains/routes not running.
S-bahn in the Rhein/Main métropole not running, or only once an hour.

Concerto

There was a major strike of the DB in August and I had a trip booked to Switzerland on the 24th. On the advice of ticket counter staff, I cancelled it because they said that no train would make it to Switzerland that day, and I booked a flight. I cancelled it using the special Kulanz link for refunds on the DB site and received a case number. Still no sign of a refund, although we're now in October. Do I really have to chase this up or will it eventually come? Is there a phone number for this sort of thing where somebody actually will pick up the phone?

Concerto

Forgot to follow up on this, I got a refund in December in the end. I did send a reminder message through the web form on the Deutsche Bahn website. I think that you need to keep at it in these situations and send them polite but firm reminders.

:D!

On Wednesday I was delayed by more than an hour on an ICE. I filled in the website form whilst still on the train, DB paid me to my UK euro account on Friday morning.


Also, I was put off from buying a bahncard before because of the problem with needing to cancel it. But I saw that it is now possible to cancel by sending a message through the website, so I decided to get one as it was cost-effective. Why can't they just put a button in the app to cancel it immediately, or better still, just make them all one-off purchases in the first place...

Though if you read railforums UK, every week there seem to be lots of people getting caught "forgetting" to renew their railcard (I suspect most of them have deliberately "forgotten").

Pierre48

Long time since I have been on this forum but wanted to get some advice on seating for 1st class reservations on DB Ice. On my ticket from Zurich airport to Munich the seat numbers are displayed on the ticket but on the Munich to Prague leg (early July) there is no mention of seat numbers. Do I need to go back into the DB website and select/buy seats?