Price quote SBB--> Without GA card 155CHF.-
Price quote SBB--> With GA card(~3300CHF to get one with free CH travelling and 25% supposed reduction in DB) 69 CHF!!!!!
Price quote of DB--> No card..49 euros! (
If you still believe in ''quality'' (ratio price/quality) of SBB just please name one thing that is better at SBB when compared to other transit networks in europe which are 60-80% cheaper
Deutsche Bahn offers very affordable rates if booked early enough, moreso with a discount travel card like the Bahncard25. ÖBB Austria comes close as well and beats SBB pricing for international journeys very easily.
I think it all has something to do with SBB being limited or restricted about operating overseas, whereas other operators may not have such limitations.
I once took the SBB train ( real SBB train ) from Chur to Hamburg Harbug. The fare from SBB online for a 90 day advance ticket was in the region of CHF365. Same train but ticket issued by Deutsche Bahn was bought online by me for less than EUR40. The train had both Euro and Swiss power plugs and the SBB livery, the same kind sometimes referred to in CH as the InterRegio class but marketed as the EuroCity ( no compartments ). No more! ICEs are way better and many more run around Europe than SBB wagons.
Once in a while, SBB does manage to do it better like one way Zürich to Stuttgart for CHF23 or to Venice for CHF36 and so on .
Reminds me of Chiasso-Milano-Chiasso which was less than Glattbrugg-ZchHB-Glattbrugg ! And as the FS counter in Chiasso was already closed and the train an SBB train Zürich-Milano it was free of charge for the Chiasso-Milano section. On return I used the FS computer and as Chiasso does not exist took a ticket to Como at a price which in Zürich would just cover HB-Oerlikon !
It was PRE-Schengen and on arrival in Chiasso a few minutes after midnight you were simply lead into the SBB/FFS CH-rail-station. There was a British family, rather confused. I clarified the situation by telling them "Welcome to Switzerland ! You have just entered this country the easy way ! Simply proceed to the hotel, everything is completely legal ! "
The other way round. You want to go to Konstanz from Zürich. If you take a ticket to Konstanz you pay an international fare. If you take the ticket to Kreuzlingen you get an intra-Swiss ticket. You in Kreuzlingen "forget" to get out and two minutes later you are in the centrer of Konstanz.
Enroute to Jestetten/D ? A ticket to Schaffhausen (same route but farther) may be cheaper
Enroute to Singen/Hohentwiehl ? You might best take a Zch-Schaffhausen-Zch return ticket and in Schaffhausen a DB-ticket to Singen and back, as Schaffhausen station also is a DB-Bahnhof.
Somebody from the Breite-Quartier in Schaffhausen to go to Basel ? THE way to go is by DB
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/que...&rt=1&OK#focus
and has been so since the 19th century. Granddad used that connection weekly in 1903 when he worked in Basel but had his parents in Stein am Rhein.
Good price, much better than a Tageskarte.
Another was to and from Rome for EUR41 "stopping" at Lindau, DE, go back home on cheap tickets, and carry to Konstanz etc. for shopping, Mittagsbuffet etc.
Same price to Copenhagen or to Stockholm ( breaking the journey in Kastrup airport, DK or Malmo, SE ).
With the GA you have ''free'' travelling within CH, and then a ''supposed'' 25% discount when using the DB network.
If you sum up those facts together you pay 69CHF... whereas if you have nothing and use the DB for this international journey you pay 49Euros.
I think you try to compare different things. My point here is what ''paizuri'' mentioned and moreover to question the ''famous'' quality (ratio price/quality) of SBB/CFF/FFS.. when compared with other networks such as DB or NS in the Netherlands which according to my opinion are much superior (always using as means of comparison the ratio price vs quality)
Source:
What the OP observed was special fares, often connected with restrictions (such as you have to take a certain train rather than having a choice of any train going in roughly the right direction on the right day, which you would have with a CIV ticket). The problem with the SBB booking system is that these special offers (often) don't show up.
Further advantages of the DB booking system versus the SBB one are:
- DB is better at finding obscure little places that SBB doesn't know anything about, not just in Germany but also in some other countries.
- most ticket can be bought and printed out immediately. If you're trying to do something very eclectic you may get a message that you should contact DB in person, but that happens rarely. The SBB system is more quickly driven to its limits.
Disadvanatages of DB vs SBB
- It's difficult to get things like GA acknowledged
Some other systems.
- SNCF is okay for booking within France but pretty useless on timetables. I sometimes find it useful to check train times on DB and then use SNCF to book (you get better offers on French trains sometimes):
- RENFE (Spain), DB and SBB do nomiinally cover Spain but they are really useless and miss out lots of stations and trains. the RENFE site is a bit cumbersome to use (that is, there are certain tricks you need to know to make it work better and reveal trains it will at first pretend don't exist) but you often get better deals for travel within Spain than on other sites. For anything outside Spain it's useless. Oh, and it says you have to be resident in Spain to use it. However, when I type my billing as Zürich, Spain, it accepts that. It obviously doesn't notice the credit card isn't a Spanish one.
- UK, for tickets in the UK, you should definitely go through one of the UK sites as DB will make you pay through the nose. Travel inside the UK is not part of CIV (only international tickets to or from the UK are) But havings aid that, I did once get a ridiculously low fare from DB for a UK train. I still believe it must have been a computer glitch as it was a peak time ticket (most UK special offers are off peak only) and it cost me about 10% of what the UK webistes were quoting me for the same journey. When I printed it out it had some very cryptic stuff printed on it and the ticket inspectors all took a long time looking at it but finally let it through.
http://www.voev.ch/oV-Info.html
These people decide on how to do promotions and marketing, and gleaning from their activities this year, not much has been done to make rail travel abroad any more attractive, as they do with local travel.
They did a trial Halbtax thing in Konstanz station and a matching limited time promo of DB's Swiss Friends, more described in this Sticky .
Their latest promos are attached here in all national languages ( nothing in the International Section ).
DB's Europa Spezial XX ( XX is the country on offer to/fro Germany ) is essentially a heavily restricted and discounted version of CIV / SCIC-TCV rates, also valid for a good 30 days, non-refundable nor changeable without a penalty and Zugbindung only in German station / area ( CH is not Zugbindung - yay! ). Their system is advanced and allows creative route planning and often saving
( like EUR22 one way from Praha to Konstanz using a DB bus, stopping over in Munich for a 1 day city break etc. )
SBB's systems are unfortunately not, at least to passengers. You often get the bog standard A to B, price is C and prices are often waaaay about the SCIC rates at huge profit margins ( St. Margarethen, CH to Lindau, DE return at CHF17 for a GA holder whereas it is EUR7 on SCIC rate for all holders at a machine in Bregenz, AT or Lindau ).
You might be keen on reading these two on tips and tricks in playing with the SCIC-NRT fares:
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/1b894c/ Penzance to Wick ( UK ) 2 months unlimited train travel
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/b883d/ - positioning yourself in Eastern Europe esp. Bratislava can save you some money. To get positioned, use a cheap ticket from DB start from Schaffhausen, Basel Bad Bf or Konstanz
There is one about Switzerland too:
Rule number one here: if it's costlier it MUST be good. if it's cheaper it MUST be bad. Performance and results are secondary.
Why are you expats so objective and rational? Have you no imagination?
Jokes aside: there could be a lot of reasons for the higher cost. Switzerland, from what I've read, spends way more than many countries on the transport network. Manpower costs are higher. It could also be that the number of trains operated or their frequencies are higher. Then there's the tax factor: I don't know if other European governments fund these institutions to a higher degree than in Switzerland.