4 ms·

Visiting Germany by train can be cost-effective: there's a good chance your train is delayed by more than an hour and you can reclaim the ticket price.

HPsquared 3y ago
The same is true on UK trains (delay repay)
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  No surprise since that's a pre-Brexit EU regulation.
pixelpoet 3y ago
Trying to get that money back is like drawing blood from a stone; depending on your hourly rate and capacity for frustration it might not be worth it. I'm genuinely traumatised by a recent DB fuckup which ruined a 6 day holiday after an entire day of frantically trying and failing to get alternate connections and being brushed off by them (you have to physically visit a separate building or send snail mail), to the point where I'm putting off important stuff in another city because I just can't handle dealing with them yet. I realise this is more about me than them, but I sincerely am having mental health problems regularly because of DB and have forgone 100ish euros refund several times in the last months because of it. Words cannot describe my seething hatred for Deutsche Bahn.
- kiwijamo 3y ago
  In 2017 I was on a late running DB train and was given a form to complete to get a refund. Problem was I live in New Zealand and have my bank account here. I fill out the form using my NZ account details anyway and posted the form from New Zelanad thinking I would never see a cent. I was shocked a few weeks later when I found out DB had managed to process my refund to my bank account on the other side of the world. I can tell you no train operator in New Zealand would do this if it was a German claiming a refund. Refunds for delays is definitely not a thing here.
  - pixelpoet 3y ago
    When I was coming back from visiting family in NZ over xmas, all the ticket machines at one of the platforms were out of order and a DB guy said don't worry about it, get on the train. It was super late, I had all my bags with me and the next train would (hopefully) be in an hour or something. Then on the train he said he would technically need to give me a fine but don't worry, he will write on the fine ticket thing that it is invalid and I can just go to the DB travel centre thing to get a refund. So I go there and they said no, they can't give me a refund, I have to go somewhere else (different building, and obviously closed). So I go another time, obviously losing time and paying extra to get there, and they said sorry it's not valid. 60 euros right there, plus all the wasted time and stress running around with a month's worth of baggage from NZ. I'm still having trouble dealing with my anger about this and several other incidents, and I basically never have mental issues like this. There was this other time where a Brazilian lady was sitting next to me for something like 3 hours while our train was delayed 10 minutes at a time, crying super hard while using Google Translate on her phone to ask me what was going on and saying she's going to miss her flights... they struggle to reliably do my 5 minute daily trip to and from work... Part of what makes this difficult for me to deal with is that I'm staunchly anti-car, and Deutsche Bahn are possibly singlehandedly going to push me to getting a driver's licence at 40, after having resisted it in South Africa, New Zealand, America, England, Poland, Czechia, ... I can't say it emphatically enough: fuck Deutsche Bahn.

HPsquared 3y ago

The same is true on UK trains (delay repay)

johannes1234321 3y ago
No surprise since that's a pre-Brexit EU regulation.

pixelpoet 3y ago

Trying to get that money back is like drawing blood from a stone; depending on your hourly rate and capacity for frustration it might not be worth it. I'm genuinely traumatised by a recent DB fuckup which ruined a 6 day holiday after an entire day of frantically trying and failing to get alternate connections and being brushed off by them (you have to physically visit a separate building or send snail mail), to the point where I'm putting off important stuff in another city because I just can't handle dealing with them yet. I realise this is more about me than them, but I sincerely am having mental health problems regularly because of DB and have forgone 100ish euros refund several times in the last months because of it. Words cannot describe my seething hatred for Deutsche Bahn.

kiwijamo 3y ago
In 2017 I was on a late running DB train and was given a form to complete to get a refund. Problem was I live in New Zealand and have my bank account here. I fill out the form using my NZ account details anyway and posted the form from New Zelanad thinking I would never see a cent. I was shocked a few weeks later when I found out DB had managed to process my refund to my bank account on the other side of the world. I can tell you no train operator in New Zealand would do this if it was a German claiming a refund. Refunds for delays is definitely not a thing here.
- pixelpoet 3y ago
  When I was coming back from visiting family in NZ over xmas, all the ticket machines at one of the platforms were out of order and a DB guy said don't worry about it, get on the train. It was super late, I had all my bags with me and the next train would (hopefully) be in an hour or something. Then on the train he said he would technically need to give me a fine but don't worry, he will write on the fine ticket thing that it is invalid and I can just go to the DB travel centre thing to get a refund. So I go there and they said no, they can't give me a refund, I have to go somewhere else (different building, and obviously closed). So I go another time, obviously losing time and paying extra to get there, and they said sorry it's not valid. 60 euros right there, plus all the wasted time and stress running around with a month's worth of baggage from NZ. I'm still having trouble dealing with my anger about this and several other incidents, and I basically never have mental issues like this. There was this other time where a Brazilian lady was sitting next to me for something like 3 hours while our train was delayed 10 minutes at a time, crying super hard while using Google Translate on her phone to ask me what was going on and saying she's going to miss her flights... they struggle to reliably do my 5 minute daily trip to and from work... Part of what makes this difficult for me to deal with is that I'm staunchly anti-car, and Deutsche Bahn are possibly singlehandedly going to push me to getting a driver's licence at 40, after having resisted it in South Africa, New Zealand, America, England, Poland, Czechia, ... I can't say it emphatically enough: fuck Deutsche Bahn.