We recently returned home from a 3-week trip to Switzerland (it was wonderful!). My wife and I had 7-day in 30 day Eurail passes that we used for intercity travel, and we purchased day tickets for local transportation. To get to our last destination, Interlaken, we used the 6th day of the 7 days on our Eurail passes, and we were saving the 7th and final day for the train trip to Frankfurt for our return flight home. Due to a mixup between SBB ticket agents in the Wilderswil station, on the spur of the moment, we had to use our 7th Eurail day on the Berner Oberland-Bahn trip to Lauterbrunnen to avoid the 90CHF fine.
Realizing their mistake, the SBB agents in Wilderswil graciously offered us complimentary tickets for our upcoming trip from Interlaken to Frankfurt, and we accepted. Unfortunately, shortly after boarding that train in Interlaken, the ticket agent on board the train would not accept the complimentary ticket, and we had to purchase tickets on the spot to get us as far as Basel Bad, then purchase tickets from Basel Bad to Frankfurt. The total cost for those tickets was $523.37 (429.37 CHF) for the 2 of us.
What recourse do we have to try to recoup some or all of that cost? Not only did the SBB agent cause us to unintentionally use the final day on our Eurail passes, but their attempt at correcting the mistake by issuing complementary tickets that had an error caused us to have to buy tickets on the train at significantly higher cost than we should have. I’ve looked at the SBB website, but could not find where to make such a claim. Any help would be very much appreciated.
Ron