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I live in the United States. Several weeks ago, my partner and I traveled on the TGV inOUI train from Paris to Barcelona. A section of the high-speed track was out of service so the train ended up delayed by just under 2 hours. As far as I can tell, SNCF's G30 guarantee entitles me to a refund of 25% of the €158 cost of our tickets (so about €40). I tried submitting the G30 form online, but the only options to receive this money were either a voucher for future travel or a wire transfer. I'm not particularly interested in a voucher because I'm not sure when I'll next be in France. As far as I can tell my bank (Chase) doesn't have any way to accept international wire transfers -- I tried putting in a couple different things I found for their bank code etc but the form didn't accept anything I tried. I originally paid for the tickets with a US credit card if that makes a difference.

Is there any way I can get my €40 back (preferably in a way that's easy to convert into dollars) without spending more than that in fees / opening a new bank account / etc?

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    you have a bank that doesn't accept international transfers? is that a thing?
    – njzk2
    May 16 at 21:05
  • I have a standard checking account with Chase bank. If they do provide a way to accept international wire transfers, I can't figure out how.
    – Gavin S. Yancey
    May 16 at 21:39
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    I believe SNCF will only do a SEPA transfer, which requires a BIC and IBAN, and a participating bank (I.e. a bank in the EU or a few other countries). You may try to contact the SNCF customer service via DM on Twitter (not the useless bot on their site) to ask if they can send an actual wire transfer (I doubt it), but that can be very expensive, on both ends. The cheapest alternative is likely to be to open an account with Wise to receive the payment and then transfer it to your account in the US.
    – jcaron
    May 16 at 23:28
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    @jcaron That seems like a pretty complete answer.
    – mlc
    May 16 at 23:53

2 Answers 2

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You could open a multi-currency account. I have one with Wise which gives me routing details in several countries/currencies, including EUR and USD. You would get IBAN and BIC for a euro account that you pass on to SNCF, getting your refund into your euro account. You then exchange it to USD from where you should be able to transfer it to your own US account (or, if that fails, get a debit card with the Wise account and use that to spend it directly).

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The paper form to file a G30 claim :

virement en euros

This means that only a SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) transfer is available, you can follow the Wise recommendation of @gerrit.

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