Deutsche Bahn Reviews 

I would rather walk to my destination than take DB again. Spent an hour on the phone with customer support to only be issued a ticket for the train I was told was cancelled

First of all, to anyone contributing to 1.3 stars instead of 1: We know you're Deutsche Bahn insiders.

This company has failed to ever meet my gradually fading expectations. I've had the horror of having to travel with these buffoons for 5-6 trips the last year. Not a single spotless trip, not a single trip with "just" 2 hours of delay, not a single trip where I didn't want to drown myself in the overpriced pumpkin soup.

Lets sum some things up:

- There's always defective trains

- There's always track maintenance (which no one but the track workers themselves seem to know about 10 minutes prior).

- Hermann his English makes monkeys sound articulate.

- That is: if he even mentions anything, you know, some trivial stuff like your carriage is gonna be dislodged, or the trainride will stop 20 stations earlier.

- Every half station (yes half, even in the forest or hell, which you will familiarize with) the train randomly stops for a technical check. Which is probably just the personell feasting on their unsuspecting victims with a spy cam.

- Articles mention that a third of every trip ends in a delay. Blatant lies. These authors were held at gunpoint by Hermann. EVERY.SINGLE.TRIP ends in a an absolute disaster.

I'd rather be stuck in an endless Imagine Dragons concert than ever be on these shitstain locomotives again. Maybe I should, to finally learn my lesson.

Do yourself a favor, unless you like to see grass grow, never make use of their trains.

This is what little capitalist pigs do tho services. Imagine hating your people so much that you allow this shitshow to go on. Bad look Germany, and you've had plenty.

This company is about the same level as the Wagner Group. Maybe a bit lower now since the Wagner Group at least tried to overthrow Putin

What didn't go wrong? The train came late, arrived late and I missed my connection. I can't get a refund because the train wasn't over an hour late. Doesn't matter that I have to buy new ticket for over a hundred euros to finally get to my destination. Also, the customer service is non-existent and it was a struggle to get any at all information.
Never using this company again and probably going to avoid train travels in Germany at all.

Warning to anyone who wants to travel Frankfurt - Amsterdam do NOT use this company find another way to travel, this has to be the most unreliable service in the world. The heads of Deutche Bahn are not fit to run this company and should hang their heads in shame, I've had for the 5 time had my journey cancelled. The last cancellation on Monday 26.06.23 lost me a day’s pay because I eventually arrived too late for work and that particular ticket wasn’t cheap. I could have got a flight for less than money. The latest cancellation 29.06.2023 has totally ruined my weekend, so from now on I will either fly or hire a car. According to the DB website I won’t even get a refund, not only is DB not fit for purpose, they take money under false pretence. I thought the German government wanted to help the environment by getting people off planes & out of cars and use the mighty Deutche Bahn, if that is the case fire the DB management and get someone in who can run a rail company.
I will never ever use this crap company again!
1 Star is far too much for this company.

It is nothing but sad, how bad this organization is. I am trying to cancel my ProbebahnCard 25 and it is nothing but impossible. Customers have to navigate through a jungle of different pages, and yet the option to administer BahnCards cannot be found. Pages keep on redirecting you to nowhere. This is only the tip of the iceberg. It almost seems like a fraudulent sheme, where you are triggered into a subscription that cannot be cancelled. I regularly use trains in Denmark, Italy and Germany, and it is simply shameful, what Deutsche Bahn keeps on coming up with

An hour before leaving from Hamburg to Copenhagen they changed the departure to pinneberg…25 min from Hamburg….without any messages. From now on I’ll fly…I’ll glad pay those extra money and avoid German train chaos.

If you have a problem, then be ready to deal with the most patronizing and unfriendly customer support ever!

I recently travelled from Brussels to Berlin and back as part of a family holiday and Deutsche Bahn made the trip so unnessecarily complicated and painful. It should have been a straightforward journey, with one change in Cologne, and plenty of time to change trains. We booked the train tickets months in advance. Then a few weeks ahead of travel we started receiving emails from DB advising that one of the trains was cancelled, then another, and another. We contacted them to ask what to do and they said we can get any other train on the same day and our tickets will be valid for them. But what about reservations? They said we will no longer have any reserved seats. So we then had to pay for new seat reservations on the new train journeys. All because DB decided to cancel the trains due to engineering works.

Fast forward to the trip itself and DB continued to mess with the journey even further. Our direct 30 minute train from Berlin to Brand Tropical Islands was also cancelled and instead we had to get 3 separate S Bahn trains that took close to 1 hour 30 minutes, since some were delayed and connections were missed. To cap it all off, on the day of our return journey the train from Cologne to Brussels was suddenly changed to add an extra stop in Liege. Allegedly due to a sudden staff illness. What should have been a 6 hour journey ended up being closer to 9 hours.

I do have to say that the DB trains are very nice, comfortable, well kitted out and pleasant to travel on. But the operations in the company are an absolute mess. There's a stereotype in the UK that everything German is efficient and runs like clockwork, well let me tell you that Deutsche Bahn is doing a thoroughly splendid job of bucking that trend. For anything more than a short, regional, journey, they are best avoided in favour of air travel.

What can I say about the DB that all previous 1-star reviews haven’t already? I was on a train to Munich, which I had to take after my other train was cancelled. Two very, very impolite employees literally yell at me as I try to explain myself and keep as calm as I can, and then they pretty much force me to buy an extremely pricey ticket with a destination that wasn’t even mine (I had to go to Innsbruck, they kept on telling me I had to buy a ticket to Salzburg — and couldn’t be clear as to WHY I should). Later, I finally get to Munich station, stop at the customer care point, and I am told by one DB employee that I should NEVER have paid another ticket for a disservice such as a cancelled train. I couldn’t believe it. I have already asked for a reimbursement, and I will continue to reach out to them as long as they don’t give me back my money.

Cancelled my train from Paris to Frankfurt. On top of this, they are refusing to provide a refund. This is simply fraud. They count on the small guy not hiring lawyers to sue them.

Beyond that most trains run with delays so you can never count on a connection. But that I put down to bad service, but at least it's not fraud.

Had I taken a plane, I would have gotten compensation under EU law in addition to a refund.

Trains delayed / canceled 80% of the time. Refusal to refund & impossible to get support. Ticket purchasing system stuck in the 80s & internal systems that are not connected, so even when you think you have a valid discount ticket you get fined upon inspection due to system errors...
It is abysmal how bad the service is.

And if you ever get one of their discount cards, EVEN THE LIMITED TRIAL VERSION, they will automatically enroll you to a yearly subscription if you don't say no to it 6 weeks before the end of the trial period. BEWARE!

The worst train service I ever saw in my life …
There is not a day without issues, delays, ghost trains,…
Paying 200€/month for this s**** … What a shame !!!

Every day something is late or cancelled and not announced.

I paid extra for the seat next to the window and with table. But I got completely different seat, no table.
So, they just take the money for nothing. DO NOT PAY EXTRA FOR THE SEAT!

There is no company in the world that I despise more than this horrible dirty company. Even nestly, shell, and tesla are better companies than Db. I have never experienced such appalling customer service. I took a train from Amsterdam to Malmö this summer. And a big part of it was with Db. But as soon as the train crossed the german border, they told us that the cart was necessary on another line so that this ride would be canceled. There was only one more station before I would get to Osnabruck, but they still dropped us in the middle of nowhere in some boring town. I ended up having to wait and then missing my connecting train from Osnabruck, which meant I missed my other trains. The man at the station in Osnabruck told me he could get me a hotel because there were no more trains to Malmö that day. Or he could just send me to Hamburg and then they would give me a hotel there and I could stay in bed longer. So I chose that, but that train was super delayed aswell. I arrived in hamburg around 2230 instead of 2000. But now comes the worst part, when I explained my situation, the german lady just looked at me and gave me a short an grumpy "nein, I will not give you a hotel." I got confused and apparently she couldn't or wouldn't give me one for some reason even though I was stranded in the cracktown called Hamburg. Then I had to go find my own hotel and pay for it myself. This was bad enough, but now after my journey, I tried to call and email Db to get compensation of some sort. But these dinosaurs needed me to send in a paper form with a bunch of printed-out things. And then they didn't give me any compensation. Not for the hotel, not for the delay, not for the other trains I had to get in denmark and sweden. This was supposed to be a simple trip, and it was thrown overboard by the horrible workings of Db. But if they had helped me with it it would be fine. I'm a poor student, I can't be paying for hotels and stuff. And they just didn't care and tried to get rid of me everywhere. "go to the website" "call this". No! If I pay you to be on a certain train going to a certain place, then you have to bring me there. Amen

Everything here is the worst. The app itself would get 1,5 stars (since it often shows wrong prices) but the train service itself is just a joke.

Trains get cancelled. They do not refund. They have contracted out their refund service to a company who has no accountability to anyone. Avoid at all costs.

DB is truly a shame to Germany's reputation !

I was travelling from Zurich to Aachen on July 18th, and then back to Zurich on July, 21th. I experienced problems on both trips.

18/07/22 The trains was constantly stopping in the middle of nowhere without any information communicated. We ended up arriving in Aachen 1 hour late. Fair enough, this happens even to the best companies– let's forget about it and give them a 2nd chance.

21/07/22 This trip was truly a disaster, both by the delay time and how DB handled the whole situation. Everything started at the train station already, even before boarding the first train.

There was an announce in German (good that I knew it, there were other passengers on the platform that only spoke English) that the train I was supposed to take was cancelled. There were no further informations communicated on which other connection to take and/or if there would be a replacement. I had the DB app installed on my phone, no information whatsoever on the cancelled train. Since I had to take another train in Frankfurt, I boarded a regional train that would enable me to catch my connection.

In Frankfurt, after 3 platforms changes in less than 10minutes, I finally board a train et actually discover by listening to other passengers that this exact train goes to a completely different destination than Zurich. So basically, DB has two trains going to different destinations on the same platform– they must have missed the meaning of the word "logic" in school. I speed up and get out just in touch, and manage to enter the second train, which is on the same platform.

Once in the train, I'm hoping now everything will go all right now. I don't have to change anymore all the way to Zurich– HAD I THOUGHT ! The train was once again stopping in the middle of nowhere with no communication from the DB personnel. It seemed like some sort of psychological game was being played on us– who would lose their temper first? We would start driving again after a half-hour stop, to then be stopped again after 10min ride, etc.. etc.. etc..

Once we were arriving close to Switzerland, there was an announcement that the train wouldn't continue further and that we would have to exit in Basel Badischer Bahnhof. There again, no information whatsoever on which other connection we should take to continue our journey– we were left to ourselves.

All in all, in managed to catch another train that would bring me to Basel SBB, and then took a direct train to Zurich. I thought to myself (and could hear others saying the same) "what a relief to be back in a well functioning country". Both trains were perfectly on time, and there was absolutely no hassle in sight. Train was super full (because of all passengers from ICE that had to transfer in this SBB train) but even then, we were not delayed by a minute. Thanks SBB for being so reliable, and what a shame DB is !!

I am entitled to 50% reimbursement since my train arrived with more than 2h delay. I've been waiting for a few months and still haven't received a penny. Even in this rather simple procedure, they managed to send me a letter wrongfully mentioning that I wasn't entitled to a reimbursement. A quick call and apologise from their Customer Service, and my demand went back in their system to be re-checked. 2 Months later, still waiting for my money back.

This company has managed to do what no-one else has, make the car more attractive again. I start to wonder if they haven't been sold to VW Group to make the train experience so bad.. Thanks to DB, I won't EVER be travelling with public transport in Germany again. I'd rather take a car or an airplane than set foot in such a badly managed train company. At least, there is something good that came out of all this, I won't loose my time, energy and temper with them ever again.

Me and my friends got kicked out from a train for no reason, they explained it as us breaking Corona rules. Whole group did wear a mask, followed the rules, we were nice and polite to everyone on the train.

Police later proved us to be innocent. We have emailed deutsche bahn for compensation, no response for months. Worst. Avoid