This is my first ever review for an app, however, I feel it is needed. This app needs an major update. It has has bugs left and right and is just not quick enough. Recently, I have been adding journeys to my unlimited pass and it would not show up on the ticket itself. This is a major issue if the train attendant thinks you don’t have a pass. The app needs a better and more efficient layout that will allow the pass to show up quicker. This makes when you have to pull the ticker up, much easier. It would also be very nice to see an integrated Apple Wallet feature. Whether or not it may be possible for the Wallet pass to update based on your journeys. It would be a feature that would be greatly appreciated. Also, for reserving seats, this absolutely needs to be integrated into the app where you can purchase them there. It is a hassle to purchase these tickets on the website. Also, there should be the ability to create multiple trips using one pass. That way you can organize trips much easier and don’t have to struggle to know which journey is which. I have been using this app for a couple of months now. It has been very useful and I have saved a lot of money. However, it really needs to be faster, more efficient, and more stable. With that being said, I hope that the suggestions are helpful and point a way towards improvement.
The app and the functions per se are fine, it would be great if seat reservations can also be made via the app. If you are using this app to use your pass, it is great. The CRUCIAL update though, is the train schedules are sometimes not updated. I booked all my tickets and reserved seats too, but the shifted schedule wasn’t updated on the app nor the website. I had to book new tickets, take 3 extra transfers, and couldn’t get to my airbnb by midnight. They didn’t charge me anything but still I wasted so many hours during my trip only because of the late update. I’m not entirely sure if it’s the interrail/eurail or the DB, but as a traveler who loves Europe I really hope there are updates or fixes made with the train. Thank you.
The only thing worse than this app is the company’s customer service. Several of my desired trips can’t be found on the app, so I have to add them manually. This fails every time, with the journey either never appearing or appearing for a short time before disappearing from my trip. This leaves me unable to travel with the passes I paid several thousand dollars for. I’ve contacted customer service three times over the past week and haven’t gotten a single reply, despite their claim that they aim to respond within 48 hours. This is unacceptable for travelers who have paid a lot of money for rail passes but can’t travel when the app won’t function properly. Also, many countries in Europe require you to make (and pay for) seat reservations for each leg of every journey in addition to having a rail pass. The app implies that reservations can be made through the app but once you click to make reservations for many countries, they tell you that these reservations can only be made in person at a train station, defeating the purpose of being able to just arrive at the station and hop on the train with your rail pass. I’ve heard it may be possible to get pass cover numbers from Eurail and then book reservations online but, again, customer service hasn’t responded to my inquiries. Terrible app when people are so highly dependent on it to function for their travel and even worse responsiveness to problems.
I've been using the Eurail app for a while now, and I must say, it's been nothing short of a frustrating experience. The app's constant glitches and breakdowns make it nearly impossible to rely on when planning my train journeys. Not to mention, the app's tendency to provide incorrect train prices has led me to overspend on more than one occasion. But that's not all – there have been instances where the app simply fails to display any train prices at all, leaving me in the dark about the costs associated with my travel plans. And let's not forget the user interface, which is nothing short of confusing. Navigating through the app feels like a never-ending maze, with the added annoyance of being randomly bounced from one menu to another. I had high hopes for the Eurail app to simplify my travel arrangements, but it has consistently fallen short of my expectations. I find myself dreading each time I have to use it, fearing yet another technical hiccup or frustrating user experience. It's a shame that an app with so much potential has ended up being such a headache to use. I sincerely hope the developers take these issues seriously and work to improve the app's functionality and user interface. Until then, I'll be exploring other options for my travel planning needs.
I used a 4 day pass in the UK, Netherlands, and Germany and it worked well enough, especially when I had to string together regional trains. Aside from it sending me notifications about disruptions affecting the other side of Europe from where I was traveling (which it still does now despite my pass having expired), my only other issue that I ran into was the bike that I was traveling with. Where bike reservations are required, I found the best solution was just going into a ticket office and talking to an actual person. I could usually get one for the same day but it did require flexibility. I don’t think there’s an option to make a bike reservation in the app, but that seems more like an issue with the various train operators than eurail/interrail. I also didn’t have to get a seat reservation so I can’t speak to that side of things. All in all, I would get it again. I think that it pays for itself in the UK, on high speed trains, or any other expensive trains. I’d check prices between the operator and the pass first though.
The UI of the new version is much better than before, and I highly appreciated that they’ve added the map feature. However, it seems to me that there’s a bug in the app that when I want to save the journey to my trips, it would say it added on the top banner but it was never being saved into my saved journeys. Other than that, it works like a charm. I would also like to see that the app would also show which platforms the trains will be located at, and also some kind of a feature that would show us alternatives routes if I miss a train between a connection. And of course, it will never hurt if we could see the map of a station for tight connections. And right now, I’m just brainstorming, but… apart from the local train schedule database, it would be awesome if we could see the schedule of a train station, or a live update of an upcoming train that I’m gonna need to catch? And it would be really nice if we can see which trains has WiFi/power etc.
i’ve been backpacking europe for about 4+ months now, and i can confidently say that even an unlimited rail pass is not worth the money. i paid around $500 (just got out of highschool, so this is a LOT for me) for a 2 month unlimited rail pass, only to realize i would’ve spent substantially less had i just purchased train tickets elsewhere. any time that you’d like to make a long journey you will have to pay for a “reservation” ranging anywhere from 6 euro (eastern europe) to 56 euro (western europe) PER LEG of your journey. you can’t even purchase the reservation through the app either, you have to go to the eurail website which is substantially worse than the app itself. any bad situation i’ve been in on this trip can be traced directly back to the eurail pass, whether it’s being stranded in germany at 4am, losing $30 on a reservation for a train that doesn’t even exist, or having to search for a bus stop in czechia to continue on my euRAIL pass journey. if you are looking to get around europe i highly recommend using omio or just buying your train tickets at the station. i wouldn’t wish the stress this app has caused me on my worst enemy.
Can I really claim they have bad customer service? I think a better term is NO customer service. They claim to have 24/7 support with a goal to respond within 48 hours to questions sent to them. I am going on three full weeks now with absolutely nothing other than an email confirmation that they got my request. The fact that they don’t have a customer service number for you to call is ridiculous. Their site is very misleading on what trains are available and when first class is available. You can’t see all the booking information until after you’ve purchased passes and once purchased you’ll see many of the train times are no longer available and first class isn’t an option. I was planning on traveling with a group of 13 but you are only allowed to book 9 seat reservations at a time and with their extremely limited number of seat reservations we weren’t able to get everyone on the same trains. After pricing trains out it’s actually quite a bit cheaper to just book things yourself from Trainline or Omio. The eurail pass is a hoax and their site and app aren’t user friendly at all.
The pass, app and website are completely useless. The app and website are so riddled with error messages, I have never been able to reserve seats through them. Their lack of customer service is also frustrating. In the reviews here in the App Store, their “support” (if you can call it that) responds with “please reach out to us”. Well I have been in constant contact with them and their support is just as useless as the app, pass and website. I’ve reached out to them multiple times with zero viable solutions from them other than to just go to the station an hour beforehand to wait in line. It’s so frustrating wasting hours at stations… when this could be easily remedied in minutes through an efficient and reliable online service (which Eurail does not have). ***Update: I can’t even use my pass. None of the stations will take it so I’ve had to purchase tickets out of pocket. It’s a total waste of money and their support will only exchange it for another pass (which will prove to be totally useless again). It’s a total scam. Don’t waste your money!
The app itself works fairly well in terms of using it, that is the only thing that this company does well. In theory it is a fantastic idea and it works well, however it is an absolute nightmare trying to actually book your train. You find a train and plan a trip on the app but then you have to reserve your seat for 90% of the trains on there which is an extra 10ish euros, no big deal. Except then you have to go back online to book your seat reservations, which half the time doesn’t even work. It’s honestly ridiculous that you can’t book them on the app. I have to go to my computer and re enter all of my travel info and find the seat reservations which I cannot choose my seat. The website is absolutely atrocious. It is so insanely slow and never loads the trips or the times or the prices. Multiple times the website doesn’t even work and I have to try hours later just to see anything. Then booking seat reservations is a nightmare. This entire company needs a re-do and is honestly so annoying it’s not even funny.
This app is honestly the biggest mistake that I have made during my trip to Italy. I bought a pass, and so far every time I book a train something goes wrong. First of all, when you get a pass, you can’t actually use that ticket to get on a train. You have to book a seat reservation that is between 10-20 dollars. You also can’t book the seat reservation through the app, you have to do it separately. So what’s the point of the app? Also, today I booked a reservation for a ticket, the charge went through, and then I got an email saying that I don’t have a seat. I have to wait for them to get back to me to get a refund, which may or may not come. Now it’s too close to my train to book a new seat. So I’m currently in the longest line of my life trying to figure out how to get a ticket without having to buy a new 50 dollar pass. If you are traveling to Europe, it’s much better to just book your tickets in the train station. Otherwise you’ll probably have to book a ticket in the station anyway and waste even more money.
I’ve experienced so many serious shortcomings with this app, that I consider it an unreliable source. Routing that puts me on a bus instead of keeping me on the through train to the destination, a complete ignorance of Italian train scheduling for connections, missteps when routing to avoid seat reservations, total failure to place a selected seat reservation in the cart for purchase, telling me there are no trains to a destination when the German S7 lines accept a EurailPass, etc. At best, use it in conjunction with Google Maps, get reliable schedules from the train companies directly, search on your own leg by leg to plan connections and transfers, show the app results to station ticket agents to get a good laugh, learn precise names for destinations for typing them in because the app is not smart, buy your seat reservations on high speed trains through a station agent well ahead of time. I don’t hate this app, I’ve channeled my disgust into constructive workarounds, but Eurail should be ashamed of itself for putting out such a shoddy product. It isn’t free if it leads you into making mistakes and missing opportunities.
At first, I was hesitant to use the app and purchase the mobile passes due to the negative reviews. However, purchasing the paper pass to be mailed to our address would have been too late for our trip. After I installed the app, the instructions to register and use it were easy to follow. I was able to add all our mobile passes on the app. I liked the “My Trip” feature, it helped us plan the train dates and times accordingly to match our itinerary for the day. The added reservation feature was useful, I didn’t have to worry about our seats. Though, I have to pay extra for the seat reservations, it was worth it. The app worked well during our trip in Italy. It took some advance planning and scheduling that helped avoid last minute headaches and problems.
In this review, I will condense all of my main gripes with this platform with bullet points, followed by my personal experience with eurail. - The application fails to verify seat availability for purchased tickets. - The application lacks effective customer support. - The application does not offer a clear way to refund, edit, or view tickets. I purchased train tickets that required seat reservations, only to find out the train was already fully booked. The ticket information page didn't include details about reserved seats, available seats, or seat status; this information was on a separate page, making the app clunky and difficult to navigate. When I tried to reserve seats, an AI chatbot failed to understand my issue and referred me to customer support. Customer support responded with a single email that only worsened the situation, offering no efficient way to correspond with someone who could help. The email I received tried to be helpful, but essentially told me to solve the problem myself. My attempts to refund the ticket were unsuccessful, and after 12 hours, no progress was made. As a result, I had to spend money on a backup plan that wasn't guaranteed to work This proved to be the common theme: no guarantees. Using Eurail left me constantly anxious, disappointed, and ultimately dissatisfied. I don't have any specific alternatives to recommend, but my suggestion would be to consider a different company.
Instead, just book the tickets you will need directly from train company or at station. I got a four day unlimited pass because I didn’t want to be tied to an exact schedule while traveling. Unfortunately this pass is no where near as simple as showing up at the station when it works for you. You still need to reserve seats on the train you plan to take (which costs extra) and the app is BARELY functional in this regard. It took myself and another person approx 1.5 hours to accomplish this task with the help of google/Reddit/previous frustrated customer comments. The mobile app pass number they give you isn’t your actual pass number, instead you have to generate this yourself through a cryptic process in the app? Then a ticket is generated, which isn’t valid since you haven’t actually paid for your seat reservation? Not the kind of issues you want to deal with when you’re trying to relax on vacation, save yourself the headache.
I thought this app seemed great at first, automatic rout planner that will handle connections and tell you when seat reservations are required. After using this app for an extended trip in Europe, it’s clear that the first impression is not an accurate one. The app will routinely show your saved journeys and travel day ticket QR codes as blank if you have anything but the fastest internet speeds available. This is fine if you can patiently reload the page a few times, but when you’re on the train and scrambling to pull up your pass when the conductor is walking through to scan tickets, have fun explaining that you actually do have a travel day on the pass and the app is just trash! The real kicker, though, are the timetables. If the app claims that a train exists, you better verify that the train *actually* exists through some other rail tracker. I routinely found “free” train routes that actually required seat reservations, trains that didn’t actually stop at the stations they claimed, or trains that just outright did not exist—on any time table. It was fun to go to an information desk in the Brussels station to find out that the train I was relying on to make a connection hasn’t stopped at my desired station since 2020! This is completely unacceptable for an app like this. I hope they can get their act together in the future. For now, you have been warned.
There are way to many steps and ways to make errors when traveling with this app. 1. The step necessary to travel are not clearly laid out in the app in order to guide you into a trouble free experience. You are left the guess and figure it out on you own. 2. When traveling on trips that require seat reservations, you cannot do it in the app. When the app directs you to the website to make the booking, it does not register it in your journey to use the travel day leaving you at risk for fines on the train. 3. When booking for multiple people such as a family traveling together, the app will only log it on the person who booked the travel and not the others. 4. There are too many places in the app with duplicate information leaving you confused as to if you are in the correct place or checked the correct box. 5. It is poorly synchronized with trains that don’t require seat reservations, such as more regional transit system trains. This error caused me an issue on the Swiss SBB system where the eurail app didn’t note a train change where one was required. My family ended up in the middle of nowhere in rural Switzerland and had to stay overnight in a train station. 6. It gives you a train number but doesn’t state which train system that number refers to so that you can independently check train schedules outside of the app.
I’m currently traveling on a munro-month vacation through Europe with three family members, each of us with a Eurail Global Pass. I have a phone with internet access, though I’m the only one who does, so I’m managing trips and reservations for all four of us. Finding and reserving trips is easy and effective. The routes recommended in the Planner tab are efficient and have so far always matched the reality at the station. We have so far had zero issues with our passes being accepted on every train we’ve boarded. My one and only complaint with the current app is that every time, without exception, displaying current itineraries (the My Trips tab) and showing our passes (the My Pass tab) results in 5-10 seconds of lag before the details of these tabs can be accessed. This is stressful when trying to review information about stops on our current train, finding connection information especially on short layovers, and when showing our passes to a ticket inspector. It becomes an irritant. I’m sure future travelers would benefit if these performance issues could be resolved, in which case this would instead be a five-star review.
First, too complicated. Bought a ticket and the app ($388 for 4 days of travel). First trip from Paris to Dijon I had the printed ticket (+$12 for first class.) Got on the train and conductor charged me 50 euro because I didn’t press first day of four on app. Rookie mistake. Showed I bought app and ticket, but he didn’t care. He pushed first day so I lost that, plus paid 50 euro more. Second leg to Brussels it said that there were no seats available. Went to station and just bought seats on a half empty train (another $124). In addition “no seats available“ on the next leg to Amsterdam until I went to the station again and directly bought seats on another half-empty train (+$120). You sell me the app and then tell me no seats available on a train with over a hundred empty seats?? Complete rip-off and waste of money and time. Would give negative stars if possible. Would like my money back.
Do not get these passes they are a scam and will steal your money
So we thought it would be great to get a several day pass and it has been a nightmare. The seat reservation system is outrageous and even though many of the trains have open seats they don’t have any more seat reservations so you can’t actually book the train you need. So I still had to buy a single ticket even though I had this pass so when I went to go get a refund because I couldn’t even use this past to get the train ticket I needed they’re only offering a 50% refund even though they say you can get a full refund if you cancel the pass before activation which this is. This company is stealing hundreds of dollars for me and has wasted hours of my time. To all my fellow Americans I highly suggest you do not buy these scam passes, just buy individual passes it will save you so much time and money.
This app is almost useless. It can only handle one task at a time before it sends you to a link, which will be either irrelevant (showing how to buy a pass when in fact, I was trying to book a ticket) or ask for information (wants you to login online but I’ve already been logged in with the app) that you just do not have on hand. This app could be much better, if it were made to be user-friendly. I think the people who designed it don’t actually use it. The search filters just don’t have enough options. I would like to take a night train from city to city anywhere around Europe and I’m looking for a list of the night trains, but this is apparently just impossible to find unless you manually go by case and search for a possible route.
Got the Eurail pass for me and my partner for 4 days after watching a video recommending it. We’ve spent over $500 on top of it to get reserved seats. Now we’ve spent over $2000 because we got stuck in Belgium. Be aware if you use a travel day the day of you can’t undo it and if the train is fully booked you’re screwed. Our trains to London are fully booked for the next three days so here we are in Belgium. I messaged their customer service just to get a reply saying “but you turned your travel day on did you not? What’s the problem?” Problem is we weren’t warned and now we are missing our flight home! We just got engaged and this trip has turned out soo awful. Not to mention i reserved seats on our first trip and we were charged but no reservation was made. Customer service told us to just hope for the best and plead with the conductor.
I’ve added my pass and the app does an excellent job of activating the pass and allowing you to allocate your days by building a Journey. However after doing all the work to build a journey and select my train rides and using my allocated days the summary page no longer references my journey correct. It shows that zero of my days are used, but when I click on the day it says day already used. This is a problem because this is the way you book a train and pull up the QRC later for booking. Edit: As a workaround if you need to be able to “show ticket” for any of your used days you can go into your trip and toggle one of your train legs off and back on. This somehow refreshes everything. This made my pass summary page update with the tickets for each day.
Today I was at the train station in Amsterdam and all of a sudden the app did not work. It kept saying I was offline, where other apps worked just fine. I had to pay for the train to get into the station! While on the train I tried over and over and the same message appeared. When I was in better reliable WiFi I deleted the App and reloaded it again and everything was fine! Lesson learned take a screen shot of your daily pass ticket ! The screen shot works! It cost me €20 for the extra train ticket.
Great idea - discounted train tickets on one interface for booking on a handy mobile app. The reality is quite another story. Pass purchased through online site does not sync correctly with the app; e.g., a pass for 15 non- consecutive travel days over 2 months is converted to 15 consecutive days of travel, making a mess of travel purchased outside the travel period created (just stunning) by the app. While I have seen a continuous stream of complaints regarding Eurail customer service, I would have to say there is no customer service. None. At. All. I am now in day 7 (!) of waiting for a response to a request to solve the issue described above, with only an automated response to say my inquiry has been received. Summary: the app is useless if the service offered does not really get delivered. Save yourself the headache - skip this.
I agree with all the other negative comments about Eurorail. The app itself is so buggy. It often says I don’t have any travel days planned or no journeys to add, etc, when I do. I have to quickly try and get the app to work before the train officer comes to check my ticket. I agree that we should be able to add our ticket to our Apple Wallet. By far the worst thing about the app is that we can’t use it to purchase seat reservations. We have to go on a browser on a computer (it hasn’t worked for me on a browser on my phone). The Eurorail pass itself doesn’t seem like the most efficient thing because after spending so much money for the pass you still need to PURCHASE seat reservations which is literally so ridiculous.
The new app doesn’t show all train options for global pass!!
NEEDS BUG FIX NOW!! This new version doesn’t have the correct train info!! The only way we know is because we’ve already bought seat reservations for a train from Lyon to Paris and when I went to double check connections my app had updated and we cannot get it to show the correct train time and route! Thank goodness my husband’s phone didn’t automatically update the app and we still have it until this bug is fixed. The seat booking part of the app still has the correct train route and time. So I cannot trust this app until the info on my new version matches my husband’s old version. PLEASE FIX THIS!!!! If you need the specific route it’s Lyon Part Dieu to Paris Gare de Lyon at 9:04 in the morning. This is super frustrating and scary as we’ve been using this app to plan travel for 5 weeks in Europe.
This app is an absolute nightmare. On day three of my two week trip all of my tickets completely disappeared and I am unable to reload them. What makes matters worse is my friend is traveling on a separate pass with her family at the same time and the same issue occurred to her. There is no customer service number so I am reduced to sending an email even though I somehow need to travel today. If I need to purchase new tickets Eurail needs to reimburse me otherwise I will take legal action. I am a licensed attorney. Given the number of similar issues I have seen on this app and on message boards this should be a class action lawsuit. Shame on Eurail for putting such a shoddy product in the market, marketing that it provides convenience and saves time when it does the exact opposite.
Do not waste your $$$ on Eurail passes. We spent a lot of $$ for a family of 7 to have passes and were not once able to ride a train with them. Eurail says we can’t get a refund even though we never used our passes because they were “activated” and there seems to be no way to deactivate them. They will let you reserve a train that you can’t take and reserving a seat is an extremely difficult process. We could never reserve a seat from their app. When we went to the Barcelona train station to reserve seats on a train we got tickets for months in advance, they said they could not do it. At the Paris station, we were informed that the train we wanted couldn’t even be used with a Eurail past despite their app letting us get tickets. Overall a TERRIBLE experience. Run away!
This app is terrible. Do not use it. I’m not sure if it’s a scam or if the creators are just inept but DO NOT USE this service. I see Eurail customer service responding to all of these negative reviews with about 4 paragraphs of how to use the app and what the user could be doing better. If you need that much explanation, it’s because your app isn’t intuitive, and is therefore, bad. I also saw the app marketed as the most flexible way to travel, but a customer service person responded to a review saying you need to book high speed trains months in advance. That means it’s not flexible. Just buy your tickets direct from the rail service, or maybe try omio or some other app (idk I just saw another user suggesting that), but I can’t stress enough, DO NOT BUY anything from this company.
This is our first time using this app. It is very confusing. I agree with one of the other reviewers that information about having a pass should be available on the ticket. It is also confusing that all the journeys are listed as one trip. It is also awkward that the process of reserving seats is not intuitive. perhaps this is all explained in the small print somewhere, which I may have missed. I have not done the calculations, but it seems that reserving seats, when mandatory, can be expensive. The number of passengers on the trips where we were required to reserve seats at quite a high price did not warrant reservations at extra cost (there were many empty seats). The trains were clean and personnel very helpful and cheerful.
Rail planner lets you activate a day on a train without seeing if seat reservations are even possible !!!! You can waste a whole data travel ticket only to find you can't get there. It fails to find all the local trains you can use to work around seat reservation problems so you can't use it to book those. It hands off all seat reservations to a web site tgat requires a coordinated login-- the same I'd as the app if you can remember it. But it doesn't open the web site in safari directly so if you tap the back button you lose all your previously entered search criteria. It's not simply hard to use but actively confuses you . It would be hard to make a worse app. The website itself is better
It’s had to describe how terrible this app is. It doesn’t integrate with the Eurail web page. It can’t be used to reserve seats. It can’t be used to buy tickets if you don’t have a pass. But you have to use it to plan your trip. It’s probably fine for people who take the train regularly between a few different locations. But for tourists, it’s terrible. It only does one part of a complicated process for planning a multi city trip. The rest has to be done on the Eurail web page (with Google Maps open in another browser). And the web page is also poorly designed. But you need the app so there is no incentive for Eurail to improve.
First, this app is nearly useless. Difficult to navigate, can’t buy seat reservations, so inaccurate. The pass itself is also nearly useless. Anything over a distance is high speed rail, so you need to buy a seat reservation. And there are always limited seats available - usually none if you did not plan weeks ahead. Also, bought a 1st class pass - either no first class seats available or double the reservation price. Do not buy this pass. Buy a country pass and individual high speed rail tickets. I spent as much on extra expenses as I did on the pass - and didn’t even get to use the first class on the longer rides.
The app is not user friendly or intuitive. It’s very confusing on what to do if your train is delayed or changed or cancelled because the app doesn’t have that real time information. It also doesn’t show what platform your train is on. It doesn’t synchronize with the website so if you book online the app doesn’t show the booking information. The fact that you can’t get money back for unused days is a scam. Especially when EVERY train to your destination has no Eurail seats available. If one leg of the trip has no seat reservations available it should offer alternatives. It shouldn’t display full trains in the search results anyway. I’m never buying a Eurail pass again.
Every single time I’ve been on a train it will delete my entire pass, all my trips and tell me I have no travel days left. Seriously the worst possible thing that could happen. Run! Don’t use this pass. The customer service is a babbling repetitive chatbot. Bad, bad, bad. So, I had my entire trip planned out and saved before I left. Perfect, right? Nope, imagine getting your ticket checked and nothing is there. No saved Eurail pass, so journeys, nothing - making you look like an idiot. Also, we had to change part of our trip due to not being able to buy reserved tickets - yes that’s a nice extra cost they don’t really tell you about… non-refundable of course.
no landscape orientation, only portrait. Tears for large tablet users. The map is just a map without pins for the eurail stations. Not sure how you overlook putting the valid eurail pass stops on the map for an eurail pass planning app, but supposedly the map is a recent feature.. which is even harder to believe. There was a version of this app without a map at all?? Shows where the developer's heads are. But the map thing wouldn't be much of a problem if you could plan a trip. Say London to Brussels, which connect by rail on the eurail website map and each have a station and this App will declare "no connections between those points". Amsterdam to london? Nope. London to Edinburgh? Yes! Hey, 1 out of 3 ain't bad, right? Towel thrown. It'd be faster to plan my trip on an Atari 2600.
the app itself is not in great condition, it’s incredibly tricky to use at points, but some features are convenient. truthfully, i don’t recommend doing this unless you’re planning to travel all at once. i was having issues regarding my pass and the staff was not helpful and quite belittling. they didn’t assist my issue and basically said there was nothing they could do. even though i had more than half of my days left with practically no way to use them because i couldn’t use it to leave my country. in all, i had a fairly positive opinion until i spoke with the service. i’ve worked in customer service so i’m not trying to be a karen, but i was cycled through over 5 different employees as i tried to address my concerns. i understand some scenarios leave their hands tied, but the circumstances i was in felt ridiculous. i don’t blame the employees themselves, i get a job can make you a tad on edge as it does the same to me, but the whole system needs to be reevaluated.
This App Is So Bad - I’d Rather Write off a $400 LOSS
UPDATE: I felt I should update my review to reflect that when I cancelled my package online I was refunded in full without even requesting it. They’re at least reputable so I’ve changed to 3 stars. It was a while ago I had my bad experience so hopefully they’ve improved. —— The worst and most confusing UI ever and I am very experienced with various UIs. Frankly, I can’t tell what I can do in the app, where I purchase seats, why I’m having to buy 1st class seats when I bought a 5-day 1St Class package. Maybe the worst app I’ve ever used….definitely the most costly.
I paid €280 for 4 travel days and man, what a rip off! Not only do they not tell you that reserving seats is essentially buying 1/2 if not full price on another ticket (what’s the point of even buying the pass??) but to reserve a seat is so incredibly pain staking and counterproductive that it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Eurorail is an overpriced and down right shady organization that should be more open about seat reservations. Coming from a guy that literally could not get into Paris from Brussels, 2 MAJOR cities in Europe because everything is reserved seating. What’s the point of paying almost 300 euros when it’s cheaper just to buy individual tickets. This was made for people who are misinformed and new to traveling europe. Don’t be a fool, just do your research. This is not the cheapest option or the easiest for that matter.
The planner is good. However... Most of the trains to be booked require reservations. Herein lies the bottomless pit of problems and basically no support. Portugal you must go to a ticket window. Spain you can only make the reservation the day of travel and they may charge full price. France TGIV supposedly can be booked from their website, but after searching many many sites and an hour on the SNCF website I can see no way to enter a Eurail pass number. The Eurail pass website simple sends you back to the app - useless. You'll save wasted hours (and probably money) just booking directly with the various train systems. Eurail Pass has been a headache and dubious value.
If I could give this a minus 5, I would. Simply awful.
This is the most confusing app I’ve ever used in my life and my entire life revolves around iPhone apps. From banking, to traveling, to social media type interactions to business emails. Everything is done on my iPhone. Yet when I got to this app, it was like deciphering hieroglyphics. The creators and administrators of this app should be fired. Why don’t you just mimic one of the travel apps? This is so unbelievably confusing and frustrating. I’m about to pull my hair out. I’ve spent a lot of money on this app, and I am now considering canceling my globalpass and simply flying from country to country. Buyer beware. You will not be happy.
Still has a few bugs to work out. One of them is when you save. Train schedules to your travel plans, but decide later to not use them. It’s impossible to eliminate them from the travel plans in multiple unusable listings uttering the screen. Occasionally, you have to force the app to close and reopen it so that it will actually load what your plans are. Seat reservation function just send you somewhere else.
Someone said “a good idea gone terribly wrong” and I completely agree. Customer service is nearly non-existent and when you do get through to them, they’re dismissive and unhelpful. We bought the Eurail in advance and still couldn’t book any trips that said they had available seats. The app was garbage and so is customer service. Sadly, if you book the global pass without “Plus”, they keep 15% of your purchase and even if you do purchase plus, you’ll still lose money due to inability to reserve any seats 🤷🏼♀️ just book the normal trains. It ended up being a lot cheaper in the long run anyways.
I don’t even know the point of this app. It is very in-intuitive and poorly organized. You have to create a trip, then add stations. But it says there are no trains from Vienna to Budapest on August 26 or 27. ?? And of course you cannot actually purchase the pass for your desired destination-assuming you could find trains. For that you have to receive an email with confirmation, but how? Maybe first open an account on their website? Apparently this app is 4 years old but reviews are poor so nobody actually cares to improve anything. Maybe because they have the monopoly so who cares about customers?
Using this app and service has been terribly overwhelming and confusing. The app itself is impossible to use, and it won’t let me have access to my ticket. This stumped the service desk at the international train station in Amsterdam but even they could not help me. I have submitted help requests and no one has reached out to me. I am going to have to spend extra money to buy a ticket because I cannot access my euro pass. There is no way to communicate with the company for support. I deserve a complete refund of my pass but cannot get in contact with customer service, so eurail has effectively robbed me.
Not only has it consumed a significant and disproportionate amount of my planning time, it has cost me extra in having to buy tickets for times that are not supported through their process. The kicker is the inability of the app to pull in itineraries that have been booked on their website. AND they penalize you to have paper tickets. Need a seat reservation? Hope you packed a printer. This is taking me back to when you had to print your own boarding passes. No confidence that this will work whatsoever. Can’t wait for the arguments onboard the train when it fails to pull up my pass.
In Europe one needs a seat reservation for the fast trains. You can’t get one through the eurail app nor through the different train company’s apps. You have to go to the actual train station the train leaves from (in the Netherlands) and most towns have several stations. By the time I had traveled to the Netherlands and gotten to the correct station all the seats were taken. Yes, you can save money with a eurail pass, but you can’t always get the train on the day you want. Also the ticket you need to show the conductor will only pop up on the day and hour of travel
We booked all of our trips in advance including seat reservations but because our trips disappeared from the app and wouldn’t load to the pass to activate the day. We could get no help from the attendants our train was right in front of us so they waved us on but once onboard they said we got on without activating the the day and charged us both 50 euros each on top of our retail pass and seat reservations. Attendants don’t know how the app works The app has bugs recognizing trips
Try it only if you are not scared of ruining your trip
It issued a ticket of a train I specified and said “You are all set.” When I got to the station, I was not able to board because there is no seat and seat reservation is a must. Why did they even issue me a boarding ticket with a barcode if they cannot confirm a seat? If there is extra step to book a seat, why don’t they provide instructions in the app? Eventually with help in the station I had to find multiple slow trains that did not require seat booking, and the route became 10 hours instead of 3.
The Rail Planner App makes your Eurail or Interrail journey smooth and stress-free, whether you’re boarding your next train at the station or planning your next trip from your sofa. Here’s what you can do: Search for train times offline with our journey planner • Search for connections across Europe without having to hunt for wifi or use up your data. Plan your dream routes and track all your journeys in My Trip • View your day-by-day itinerary, get statistics for your trip and see your whole route on the map. Check station boards for arrivals and departures • See which trains are scheduled to depart from or arrive at your chosen station in Europe. Travel with ease with your mobile Pass • Add a mobile Pass to My Pass and go paperless on your travels, from planning your trip to boarding the train. Show your mobile ticket straight from My Pass • Show your ticket in just a few taps to breeze through ticket inspection with your mobile Pass. Book seat reservations straight from the app • Go online to buy reservations for trains across Europe and guarantee your seat on busy routes. Save money with extra benefits and discounts • Search by country and get extra discounts on ferries, buses, accommodation and more with your Pass. Find answers to all your questions • Read FAQs for the app, your Pass and train services in every country for a smooth trip, wherever you’re heading.