Deutsche Bahn

My last complaint for this year 🙂

Dear deutsche Bahn, the only strong performance you have is on Facebook. Whoever is in charge of this – great job!

Besides that…

I don’t take very often a train, which is a pity, but there’s a reason for it.

You have to book a train ticket 3-6 months in advance (no flexibility) to get an affordable price (—> I like the model some city’s public transportation are using: ticket gets cheaper the more people used the train that day, because the train is going anyhow). A day before the trip you offer upgrades to 1st class for only 15€ – excellent, if I hadn’t already paid 10€ for my seat reservation which then I would no longer need (—> why doesn’t each ticket automatically come with a seat like in so many other countries like France, Japan or China?)

It seems a total surprise that rails can be icy & snowy in December! Well, it’s winter time. It’s been like that since I can remember 😉

A couple of weekends ago I enjoyed again some Deutsche Bahn train fun:

1. I was on the platform, the train wasn’t.

2. Train was delayed by 10 minutes. In fact all trains had been delayed or cancelled that morning!

3. Train arrived on a different platform.

4. Of course all carriages where in a different order! (Why is that? And why does it seem a surprise, whenever and wherever the train departs, the order should be clear…).

5. Due to technical issues we waited inside the train for about 40minutes before leaving Stuttgart main station.

6. WiFi worked (yeah!), electricity plugs din’t (oh no! Working in the train gets difficult).

7. We left Stuttgart with a 50min delay (luckily I’m not depending on train changes) and got slower on the way…

8. Due to continuous technical issues we couldn’t reach the normal speed 230kmh which caused further delay (120kmh) – let’s see how much it will be, my destination is „only“ 5.5 hr ride away (if it was any closer I’d go by car)

9. Solution: the train is now driving the other way round to solve the speed issue, fingers crossed we are not going back to Stuttgart.

The good news: I arrived. I arrived 2 hours later as expected but I made it to my final destination.

And maybe that’s the problem: not finding & analyzing the root cause (or not publishing it… maybe being on time isn’t possible with current rail system), but paying big bonuses. In my company you’d be fired!!! And why does public transportation have to create wins end of the year?