Maria

Used Rail Europe past 3 years for my seat reservations aligned with my Eurail Pass. Timetables are accurate and up-to-date giving reliable alternate routes/ times/ journey length and clear pricing. You can mess about with each country's train website or Eurail (whose Rail Planner app doesn't give all train routes); but all-in-all Rail Europe is an efficient one-stop for planning and booking. Be aware you will only be charged the Booking Fee once if you make all your reservations on the same transactions. Otherwise; each booking at different times attracts the booking fee.

Elderly active traveller.
Previously had disastrous results buying shoes online.
Googled "Best Women's Lightweight Waterproof Walking shoes"; as my current shoes started leaking in the rain on the last trip.
Rang Kate/Kay (?) on Wild Earth Help Line (Sunday at 11.30ish); Took advice about sizing up at least half a shoe-size.
Received shoes 2 days later with updated parcel tracking.
A review gave me a further discount of $5.25 using GETWILDER.
Shoes as described; incredibly comfortable to wear and walk in.
Would definitely recommend the Merrill brand of shoe and buying through Wild Earth for prompt service.

I have to say that I didn't use Airtasker for a few years as we'd moved cities and went the route of using skills recommended by our complex management; hit and miss. However I had a couple of tricky jobs crop up, and turned to Airtasker. I had forgotten that the Standard of work, communication
and professionalism from the taskers (usually solo operators) is pretty high as the taskers need to be a good if not better than businesses and storefront operators. As an example; I had a fairly new German-made recliner chair that stopped working. The Australian support company quoted me over $600 to replace the motor without even coming out to view the chair. After much frustrating correspondence with Germany, the Aust reps, multiple Recliner chair repair shops, I posted the task on Airtasker. An Electronics guy responded, came out, found the problem and fixed it with a $20 part.
Taskers won't respond if they haven't got a good chance of a successful result.

Once you get the hang of it; the website is terrific. I'm using RailEurope to book seats using our 2 month Eurail Pass in Italy and France; and Rail Europe states which trips are Free for us passholders. The timetables are a lot more comprehensive and inclusive of regional trains trips that don't come up on the Eurail Trip Planner. French trains seat reservations can be stored in a 'basket' for a few weeks so you can plan several trips, whereupon Italian seat reservations must be paid for within 10 minutes. That's the only tricky part. On previous trips of 2 months duration, we either booked on the train website of the country or turned up in person to a train station, lined up and booked our seat reservations at the local Ticket Office. Sooo time consuming.

I wrote a 5 star review in 2022 after travelling with a 2-month Seniors Global Railpass that went so well that we bought another 2-month pass for 2023 once again saving us a ton of money and time and giving us a freedom not felt since our younger backpacking days.
We picked up a few tricks along the way, as luckily we had the time to think things through and travelling over 4 months in total; tends to frugality. Bear in mind that we travelled on the edge of high season; different from the crush of summer.

1) If you are train travelling for any length of time in one country; Download the rail app of that country. e.g. The German Deutsch Bahn (DB) App is invaluable; everyone that travels / commutes by train in Germany has it on their phone as trains are notoriously delayed/ cancelled or have platform changes; and relying on the Platform Display and muffled announcements in German guarantees that a non-German speaking passenger will miss their train. The DB app has real-time updates. I would never travel on a tight schedule in Germany.

2) We had been travelling in Belgium/ Netherlands/ Germany/ Czech Republic/ Hungary; all of which did not need paid seat reservations. So maybe this threw us a bit.
Following the DB tip; we decided to download the Trenit! app in Italy to find that our Eurail Trip Planner omitted nearly all of the train times of rail journeys that did not need a paid Seat Reservation (However, now if you click on "No Seat Reservations" it may come up with a few options, but still not all shown on the Trenit! app). In this review site I can't attach screen shots of the search results of 12 trips in Trenit! (Italy's rail booking site) from Parma to Bologna Centrale (a 1hr journey) between 8am and 12 noon. In Eurail Trip Planner only 5 trips came up (and 3 more under "no seat reservations"), all of which required seat reservations costing 5-15 euros pp.
Prior to leaving Australia I saw in Eurail Trip Planner that we had to make a seat reservation from Bologna to Parma costing 15 Euros pp; after a little research I bought 2 full price train tickets via Trainline totalling 17.60 euros (8.80 euros pp) a little peeved about the cost of seat reservations. We were travelling from Innsbruck; a long day so I didn't want to end up seat-less in a Bolognese train.
Arriving in Bologna Centrale, the ticket office lady said in surprise that there were (fast) trains that left every hour (to Parma) and that we just needed to hop on without a seat reservations for most of them. So we could have saved 17.60 euros after all, not to mention fuffing around on the home computer for a few hours. Learning moment.
So throughout Italy, we relied on Trenit! for train times rather than the Eurail app only booking seats on journeys that we really, really had to after double checking with the ticket office. We ended up making far more day-trips when we found that we could ride the trains without making seat reservations every single time. I somehow got it into my mind that all Italian fast trains needed a paid seat reservation; but that's not always the case.
If you followed that wordy paragraph; the short of it all is to Do Your Research, Download the train apps of the country you are in, click on "no seat reservations" in the Eurail Trip Planner (to see if they match the official timetables), if time check train ticket prices and sometimes they are cheaper than the Seat reservations cost, and Not All Fast Trains need a Seat Reservation.
Side note: Italian Trains are very reliable.
3) If you do need seat reservations; work out your train times and when in a smaller quieter station; get all your seat reservations done at once. Otherwise you'll get stuck in a long slow queue at major train stations' ticket offices.
4) If using the Eurostar: buy your Eurail pass as early as 6 months prior in order to guarantee a booking/ seat as there are limited seats available to Eurail pass holders.
5) Eurail's Trip Planner in Hungary doesn't work. We were staying in Budapest Kelenfoeld one stop before the main station of Budapest Keleti thinking we'd Eurail the one stop every day into Budapest Keleti and return. However the Eurail Trip Planner couldn't come up with the option, and we couldn't get an handle on the Hungarian rail app. So just paid for the city Metro into the city and back.
6) In London; the pass is valid on the Elizabeth Line which takes you to/ near most of the main sights in London. The pass is now recognised by the gate attendants although there are no scanners at the entry barriers to let you though. Last year I was refused entry; but this year there was no problems.

This is not a critique with Eurail; but just stuff that we would have found helpful had we known. We'll buy another 2-month pass for 2025 no doubt. Maybe splash out for 1st Class?

After our Eurail trip last year spending literally hours in line at train stations booking seats only; decided to book our seats online for multiple trips at ItaliaRail website. Noticed that every Seat Reservation fee of €10 attracts a "€3 fee per card transaction" (per person, per trip). Hence €60 (6 trips) becomes €78 at the checkout (+€1 "Service Fee"). Seat61@ItaliaRail refunds the "Booking Fee" but none of the extra charges counts as that pesky "Booking Fee". I had multiple emails with ItaliaRail help line; and in the end she just stopped responding. So I'd think the most cost effective way is to turn up to the first Italian train station you get into, and booking all your trips throughout Italy at the Service Desk hoping that none of the trains are booked out. Note; you cannot make seat reservations at the station ticketing machines. The Eurail Booking Service charges the bumped up €13 + their own €2 booking fee. Also; timetables on some routes don't line up with ItaliaRail - so check times at different rail sites

We bought a 2- month pass and used it for fairly relaxed itinerary (including daytrips) on high speed, local, Eurostar and intercity trains in London up to Scotland/Spain/Portugal/France/Italy/Austria. We researched booking fees so no surprises; and although there were unforeseen hiccups (train cancellations, long lines at booking offices, scheduled trains full up so change of plans) nothing the fault of Eurail and what you need to expect with a holiday reliant on train travel. As an exercise, after the trip, I costed each journey including booking fees and found we still saved £615 each over the cost of the pass. This included 16 nights of the 8 weeks in London using the pass on the new Elizabeth Line and 15 days on the local city S-bahns in Germany and Austria. We did come across a couple of officious ticket attendants in London train stations who refused the Eurail Pass as they didn't realise it was valid on the Elizabeth Line which made for an ugly scene which is why I dropped half a star in this review; a need for training/communication. But we are buying the 2 month pass again for 2023. Definitely worthwhile as it has always been; especially the continuous 1&2 month passes. Plus you can't beat the convenience.

Terrific service and price with product exactly as described, I am an older buyer; used to shopping at stores and having to organise to transport items to family in other cities.
So Free shipping a huge bonus; this is the 2nd product I have bought with My Deal, the first being a sofa which also arrived within a week to another location, So you can appreciate the time saving involved.