We're going to France this summer and we were thinking about buying a France Saver Pass for train travel. Since we need to get from Paris to Cassis at a particular time on a specific day we wanted to make a reservation. We could get time table information at voyages-sncf.com
I posted some questions about this in misc.transport.rail.europe and rec.travel.europe and got lots of useful advice. A very useful piece of advice was to research the topic at the Usenet archive at Google.
For what I thought would be the most authoritative answer I wrote to information at sncf.com and received "I inform you that it is impossible to book a seat on our web site when you have a train pass."
The message also contained an incorrect phone number for the English-speaking Call Centre. The number they supplied took me to an agent, but not an english-speaking agent. She courteously gave me the current number.
I ended up calling
SNCF English-speaking Call Centre - 33 8 92 35 35 39
Dialing 011 first from the US, made a reservation and purchased tickets. the tickets will be sent to me in the US and should arrive in 10 days.
We decided not to purchase the France Saver Pass. It seems to me that we can get the tickets we need and travel as we wish more cheaply than purchasing the France Saver Pass.
Originally posted May 2002