Australians: Beware of raileurope.com.au $ charges

This probably apply to Australian only, I just want to share what I learnt !!

www.raileurope.com.au which carry an australian domain name, showing they charge AUD but when they actually charge, they are charging from an overseas company, not australian company, as a result, most Australia credit card will treat that as a foreign transaction and charge (normally 3% or more) disregard raileurope.com.au indeed charge the AUD amount quoted.

If you want to purchase tickets from raileurope.com.au, disregard it quote in AUD and charge in AUD, remember to use those credit/debit cards that do not attract foreign transaction fee. I suspect this will be the case for happyrail.com as well which I cant confirm.

I already notified raileurope.com.au to remind customer their AUD quote might attract foreign transaction fee when using an AU credit/debit card.

Hope this help :)

Last time I made a purchase through Rail Europe Australia, for 2 Eurail Passes, I selected PayPal as my method of payment.

The cost of the two passes amounted to $1,332, and there was a shipping fee of $8.00, but strangely I was only charged $1,339 instead of $1,340. Not sure what explains that.

It was charged to PayPal by Rail Europe in Australian dollars, and PayPal charged it to my PayPal-linked credit card in Australian dollars as well. All charges tallied with what I had seen onscreen during the purchase process, except for the $1 difference.

Anyway, using PayPal might be a way of avoiding additional fees due to Rail Europe's charging practices.

Alpenrose

Thanks for sharing your experience Etravel. It's always a challenge to loose as little money as possible on international transaction fees :-) Rail Europe has an office in Australia, or used to have one, I'm not sure. So I would not have guessed in international fee applies. Happyrail is not Australian so buying there is an international transaction anyway, but their product prices are a lot lower mostly. Picking AUD as the currency should at least prevent exchange rates that are not in your favor, but do check if the web shop does not increase prices for a different currency in the first place. Happyrail doesn't but some others do. As for Paypal: if you pick a different currency than the one in your Paypal account they take an expensive exchange rate in my experience, but if it's the same currency it might be a good option as Alpenrose suggested.

Ah, using paypal without attracting the foreign transaction fee make sense, because raileurope charge paypal which paypal dont care the country origin of the merchant, and the credit card get charge by australian account paypal so no fee.

Anyway wont use raileurope any more, their train tickets are 'normally' a lot higher with fee, their customer service are rude and provide incorrect information to me, e.g. they told me I have to wait for my Swiss Travel Pass by post instead of email ! I just shutup and post another enquiry.

My mistake this time is because of greed, they got a promotion and without the fee, I am better off, with the fee, I am well nearly on par.

Lesson learnt, and no need to guess next time who NOT to use :) What an experience.