Americans Having Problems Pre-Booking on GWR.

[Envoy]

Americans are claiming to have problems pre-booking tickets on the GWR site.https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/england/great-western-railway-ticketing-problems

I've tried for a week now to purchase tickets from London to Bath for June. I get to the page where I input my credit card info and I always get an error message. I've checked with my credit card and there is no issue on their side, I've cleared my browing history, I've tried booking on another computer - all to no avail. I've also emailed GWR, but the response is weeks ago it said. Has anyone else had problems with booking? I'm afraid if I don't get them booked soon, they will be a fortune and I need 4.

Yes, had a similar problem last month. Finally resorted to trainline and for an additional small fee booked through them.

What does the error message say?
I've been having trouble buying tickets from the UK with my U.S. credit card.

I can't get the GWR website to work at all. Tried several browsers. I had this problem a few weeks ago when I was buying my tickets to Bath and York. I would suggest Trainline, even if you have to pay 50-75 cents for a booking fee. It's worth it, and there were no problems booking any of my tickets for this summer.

 

[paddington]

Americans are claiming to have problems pre-booking tickets on the GWR site.

Hardly new, one positive about privatisation is perhaps that if one TOC site doesn't work you can just try another and get exactly the same ticket

Not the same in other European countries for domestic and some international journeys, bahn.de refuses to accept my main card for foreign spending so I have to use another, yet cd.cz doesn't accept that one but only the main one

 

[GatwickDepress]

Did anyone mention you can buy the full range of tickets from any other TOC website rather than resort to thetrainline?

 

[Greenback]

Yeah, someone called ramblin on!

 

[LesS]

A few months ago I had 2 failures with my Barclays debit card. I was using this from
Sydney. With one booking it was with a hotel and they accepted my booking without payment. I later went back to the other at a different time of day and was successful.

I concluded that during UK business hours the payments clearing system is overloaded, hence with time limits on transaction processing, you get a failure.
All of my successes was during the early hours of the morning UK time.

Over several years I have had no difficulties with Bahn.de using my Australian Mastercard. Always successful and no problems with subsequent travel.