What if the SNCF had finally understood that to encourage travelers to take the train, it must above all facilitate its use? So far, the first quality of the company's applications and websites has not really been simplicity. To find out if a train was late, you had to go to the parent company's website: SNCF.com. To establish your itinerary, consult the SNCF assistant. To modify a professional ticket, download the TGV pro app. To take advantage of Prime tickets, acquired with his Grand Voyageur card, this time it was the obsolete TGVinoui.sncf. To buy a ticket, finally, we turned to oui.sncf... This multiplication of media had ended up becoming a nightmare for users, even experienced in the use of digital. The culmination of this joyous succession having been theabandonment of voyage-sncf.fr for oui.sncf.
Fortunately, the “Yes” episode finally ends.
Gone is the "inOui" brand - who has ever dared to say in public "I'm taking an inOui" instead of "I'm taking a TGV"?
The new direction of Voyage SNCF took the measure of this mismanagement and the headaches it caused - fare complication and refund exchanges, incompatibility of the different systems... - and launched a vast program to reunify these different platforms. .
Oui.sncf, the most important of them - it is moreover one of the largest commercial sites in France - will therefore be gradually shut down and replaced by SNCF Connect, presented this morning at a press conference .
Read alsoParis-Lyon: we tested the difference between SNCF and Trenitalia
More clarity but some pitfalls...
Initially, SNCF Connect will bring together oui.sncf and the SNCF assistant.
Among its advantages, in addition to greater clarity, is that of displaying several prices if you have several discount cards.
For exchanges and refunds, you can now pay the only fare difference without having to be reimbursed for your first ticket to issue a new one.
Despite this progress, the major simplification announced still comes up against a few pitfalls.
The first, the fact that the carrier and the ticket distributor are two separate bodies.
Although the SNCF operates your trip, for example between Paris and Lyon, the ticket purchased on oui.sncf is issued by a travel agency of… the SNCF.
However, travel agencies do not have the right to touch tickets issued by other travel agencies.
Therefore, if your ticket is issued by Trainline or your local agency, you will not be able to modify it on SNCF Connect.
Hence the need to keep, at least initially, the TGVpro application which allows exchanges (but only for tickets at the same price).
Another problem, if the new SNCF Connect site should allow you to detail your door-to-door route, it will only be able to sell the main line train portion at first.
For TER tickets, everything will depend on the goodwill of the regions.
Some of them are very jealous of the tariff freedom granted to them by the State for transport, such as New Aquitaine or the South region, and only sparingly authorize the sale of TER tickets to the SNCF.
Even if it means complicating the lives of connecting passengers...
Finally, there are States within the State within the SNCF.
Eurostar, Thalys, Lyria: all have their own operating, exchange and refund rules.
Will computer scientists succeed in simplifying this system, which has become extremely complex and confused?
The road may be long...
