Book tickets online, it's hassle free, YEAH FUCKING RIGHT!
Today the NMBS the piece of shit coorporation that passes for Belgian national rail has decided that from next Monday on, it'll cost € 7 extra if you book your tickets in real life at the station. If you want to do it for free, you need to book online.
So Bert and I decided that, how hard can it possibly be, we'll look at Thalys tickets for a day in Paris online.
Sure enough, it SEEMED straightforward. Then we came to the point where we were asked to give a special code for his visa. Which has to be generated with a machine we don't have. How typical.
So I say: not a problem, I shall book with dad's visa, we shall give him the money, all shall be well.
In theory this is a sound plan.
In reality, this is a plan made of FAIL.
We start over, I imput MY data (instead of Bert's like we did at first) and I get a note saying it's not working. Said note comes with a code, because you know, poor NMBS doesn't want us to pay double by accident. Because obviously, they are going to charge a card that doesn't have the legal code they need to be able to legally charge a card. And obviously, they're going to charge my dad's card without actually having ANY informaiton on said card.
So I send them an email, with said code. I get a mail back telling me I should ring.
Said phonenumber costs € 0,30 per minute (so far for booking FOR FREE). I ring said number, apologise to the girl on the phone for being annoyed, assure her it's not her fault, but that with all that website grief, people just get cross.
She proceeds by making me wait 4 minutes for her boss, who has "stepped out". Like I did not see that one coming. Oldest trick in the book.
After some argueing she cancels the attempt that Bert did to book.
She then tells me we can book said trip (which she just cancelled no less) via the phone for yet another added fee of € 7.
yes ladies and gentlemen, some of the belgian news channels will claim it's only starting monday next week it costs you € 7 in person, in reality it's only free if you book online and all goes well (which I'm sure it hardly ever does).
I'm convinced they set up the website in a way so you HAVE to ring them, and that they figure that people will get annoyed enough to pay the € 7 fee. Hell, I would have if Bert hadn't gotten a sudden case of principles (he is right really, but we now may miss out on cheap tickets) and refused to let me.
Of course, you have to wait half an hour after every failed attempt to start over again, which means that you may miss out on good deals. Another way of them to try to get people to ring and cough up all the extra cash (I'm guessing that booking over the phone will easily cost you € 10 extra over booking online).
Seeing I have to be in Antwerp on Friday, I am REALLY tempted to walk up to the international ticket booth and say: at this point I can still get a foreign ticket without any added cost. Find me a ticket under following conditions and hand over the list of proverbial demands (which aren't really demands honest, but you know what I mean). I can't actually go to our station because guess what, Heist-op-den-Berg does NOT have an international ticket section, you can NOT get one here. If you want to buy a ticket in person you need to pay money to take the train to a station that does have one.
And then they wonder why less and less people bother with the train...
So Bert and I decided that, how hard can it possibly be, we'll look at Thalys tickets for a day in Paris online.
Sure enough, it SEEMED straightforward. Then we came to the point where we were asked to give a special code for his visa. Which has to be generated with a machine we don't have. How typical.
So I say: not a problem, I shall book with dad's visa, we shall give him the money, all shall be well.
In theory this is a sound plan.
In reality, this is a plan made of FAIL.
We start over, I imput MY data (instead of Bert's like we did at first) and I get a note saying it's not working. Said note comes with a code, because you know, poor NMBS doesn't want us to pay double by accident. Because obviously, they are going to charge a card that doesn't have the legal code they need to be able to legally charge a card. And obviously, they're going to charge my dad's card without actually having ANY informaiton on said card.
So I send them an email, with said code. I get a mail back telling me I should ring.
Said phonenumber costs € 0,30 per minute (so far for booking FOR FREE). I ring said number, apologise to the girl on the phone for being annoyed, assure her it's not her fault, but that with all that website grief, people just get cross.
She proceeds by making me wait 4 minutes for her boss, who has "stepped out". Like I did not see that one coming. Oldest trick in the book.
After some argueing she cancels the attempt that Bert did to book.
She then tells me we can book said trip (which she just cancelled no less) via the phone for yet another added fee of € 7.
yes ladies and gentlemen, some of the belgian news channels will claim it's only starting monday next week it costs you € 7 in person, in reality it's only free if you book online and all goes well (which I'm sure it hardly ever does).
I'm convinced they set up the website in a way so you HAVE to ring them, and that they figure that people will get annoyed enough to pay the € 7 fee. Hell, I would have if Bert hadn't gotten a sudden case of principles (he is right really, but we now may miss out on cheap tickets) and refused to let me.
Of course, you have to wait half an hour after every failed attempt to start over again, which means that you may miss out on good deals. Another way of them to try to get people to ring and cough up all the extra cash (I'm guessing that booking over the phone will easily cost you € 10 extra over booking online).
Seeing I have to be in Antwerp on Friday, I am REALLY tempted to walk up to the international ticket booth and say: at this point I can still get a foreign ticket without any added cost. Find me a ticket under following conditions and hand over the list of proverbial demands (which aren't really demands honest, but you know what I mean). I can't actually go to our station because guess what, Heist-op-den-Berg does NOT have an international ticket section, you can NOT get one here. If you want to buy a ticket in person you need to pay money to take the train to a station that does have one.
And then they wonder why less and less people bother with the train...
