Customer service lacking on European rail travel
By Kayt Sukel on Monday, April 12th, 2010

This past Sunday, my 5-year-old son and I took the fast-service train from Paris to Germany. As the train stopped hard and short into our intended station, a service cart that should have been secured fell over on my child. The cart was heavy, full of breakfast service items.

Customer service lacking on European rail travel

Child pinned against heavy cart

It was also topped with glasses and mugs that then broke, on impact, around my son’s head and shoulders. There were shards of glass in his hair and all over his clothing. Once I realized my son was pinned by the heavy cart, my first priority was freeing him and making sure he was all right.

I pulled the cart off of him and then, since it was our stop and passengers were queuing to get off and on the train, I moved him and our belongings to the station platform to check him for injury. I was expecting one of the train personnel to offer assistance and ask if my son was all right.

No assistance from train staff

One of the service officers did witness the incident and immediately focused on cleaning up all the glass. The only notice I received was a train employee who approached me just before the train left the station. She had something in her hand. I thought it was perhaps a card or a telephone number to call.

Instead, it was one of the free choccies you get when you order a cappuccino from the bar car. Perhaps I should have more actively sought out someone from the train but I was focused on my child. The good news is, apart from a few bumps and bruises, my son is uninjured.

Frustrating experience of train travel

There was no way for the train personnel to know that without coming over to check in with us – and frankly, if that cart had fallen just a little bit to one side, my son could have been seriously hurt. Normally, I am a huge advocate of train travel in Europe – especially with kids.

But I find this experience very frustrating for the following reasons:

The service cart should have been secured.

Simply put, there was no reason for an unsecured service cart to be left near the train car exit right before a stop. With trains stopping short for various reasons, the cart could have fallen on any passenger trying to embark or disembark the train.

With all the glasses on top of the cart, even if no one was nearby, broken glass could have been tracked all over the train car. Airlines are fastidious about securing service items and carts during a flight. I have to believe that trains have similar regulations in place.

That cart should have been adequately secured before the train made its stop. This accident never should have happened.

Someone from the train should have made sure my son was uninjured.

I understand that trains have schedules to keep and no one likes delays. But even if the train personnel were too busy facilitating passengers on and off the train, I have to believe they could have radioed back to the station to send someone to make sure my son was all right.

Even on a Sunday, shouldn’t there be someone who could have checked in with us? It’s not only a customer service 101, in my opinion, its good common sense. What might have happened if my son was seriously hurt?

It shouldn’t be so hard to find someone to talk to now.

Once Chet and I got home, I wanted to find somewhere to lodge a customer service complaint. For me, the concern is safety – I want whoever is responsible to know this happened so it can be avoided in the future. The problem is I had no idea where to do it.

I got my tickets from an agent, boarded a French TGV train with what looked like Deutsche Bahn employees on board. I ultimately went to the Deutsche Bahn website since they are responsible for the station I disembarked at. I looked all over the site for a form or email address.

Instead, there’s only a toll number I can call that takes me immediately to a message in German I can’t understand. I googled for other options – no ways to lodge a complaint were listed and all English pages mentioned Rail Europe.

Because of this, when I finally tweeted about my frustration on Twitter, I mistakenly called Rail Europe out about the incident even though they are simply a preferred English-speaking ticketing agent. I attempted to contact Deutsche Bahn via the two Twitter addresses they have listed as well as writing an email to the company CEO.

To date, I haven’t heard a thing back.

With Twitter, social media tools and interactive Web sites, it simply should not be this hard to make a complaint.


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21 responses to “Customer service lacking on European rail travel”

Guido | 12 April, 2010 at 9:26 pm

Business as usual with the steam engine era engineers of the European Rail Roads. You pay they drive and don’t care.

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Caitlin | 12 April, 2010 at 9:27 pm

Wow! I’m glad Chet is okay. What a horror!

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Darren Cronian | 12 April, 2010 at 9:32 pm

I said this to Kayt but, because it was a SCNF train but ran by DB staff it’s more likely that one will blame the other. Hopefully someone will investigate because it’s not the type of incident that you want happening when your travelling with kids.

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Nick | 13 April, 2010 at 9:53 am

A scary experience for you both. I do, however, find your gripe about a lack of English customer service a complaint too far. It’s not reasonable to expect companies to provide staff who speak every language in all locations. If you travel in France or Germany you should not EXPECT to communicate verbally unless you speak French or German.

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Garry Benaltune | 13 April, 2010 at 1:16 pm

Katy are you sure that there was no one on the station that you could speak to about the incident? I find it hard to believe that no one was around. I am glad your child is okay and hopefully someone will be able to answer your questions.

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Caitlin | 14 April, 2010 at 1:37 am

@Garry I think you’re missing the point. Kayt didn’t need to seek out anyone at the station because her son was fine. But she feels that since the train staff didn’t know that, someone should have approached HER.

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Caitlin | 14 April, 2010 at 6:48 am

@Nick Kayt lives in Germany and speaks some German. Most Germans, however, speak excellent English. If you travel in Italy or Spain, then you might need Italian or Spanish; Germany is another story. It’s not quite on the level of English proficiency as the Netherlands or Scandinavia, but it’s up there. Despite all this, Kayt was not actually expecting to communicate verbally in English – she was trying to find English language information on a website. This is not an unreasonable expectation in Europe. And don’t give me the “every language” line – English is not “every language”. It’s the language of business in Europe.

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Rachel | 14 April, 2010 at 7:10 am

Hi Kayt

My father wasn’t feeling very well on the train between between Perpignan and Paris so we asked for assistance on the train. No one would speak to us in English (I know we shouldn’t expect it but none of us could speak the language, just the basics) so we ended getting off the train and getting assistance at the train station.

Like you no one came to us from the train and offered any assistance. It seems that the staff are not trained to deal with incidents but to simply check our tickets and serve us with food and drink. We didn’t travel on the same network as you but it’s obviously an issue on European trains.

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Darren Cronian | 14 April, 2010 at 7:17 am

I have contacted Deutsche Bahn about this issue to see if someone can come on and respond to the issues that Kayt has had. I had to go through their press contact page. Hopefully someone will respond here or, email me.

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Kayt Sukel | 14 April, 2010 at 7:54 am

Thanks for all the comments.

@Nick – I was expecting English on the Web site. I was happy to speak with someone in my pidgin German or French on site if I had found someone to do so. But still, as Caitlin said, English is the language of business in Europe – I do expect there to be adequate information about how to find customer service in English on the Web.

@Garry – I honestly believed someone from the train – perhaps the employee who actually witnessed the incident – would come talk to me or point me in the direction of where I could speak to someone. That didn’t happen. I did run into one Deutsche Bahn employee in the main station in a DB jump suit. He was in a rush and said he could not understand me – but honestly, he didn’t really take the time to try. And I couldn’t chase after him with an upset child and all of our bags. I suppose, since it was a Sunday (and, I believe, German school holidays), they were thinly staffed. But frankly, I *shouldn’t* have to go searching high and low for a DB employee after an accident like that was witnessed by train staff. They should have sent someone to me.

@Caitlin and @Guido – Thanks.

And @Rachel, I’m sorry to hear of your experience. But I’m glad you were able to find help at the train station.

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Kayt Sukel | 14 April, 2010 at 8:01 am

And @Darren – I emailed the Deutsche Bahn CEO after I couldn’t manage a way to contact customer service online. To date, I haven’t heard anything back. I hope you have more luck!

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Oliver Schmidt | 14 April, 2010 at 12:48 pm

Dear Kayt,
Please accept our sincerest apologies about what had happened to your boy on board our train. Surely someone of the on-board staff should have looked after him and apologized for the incident.
We will forward this to our customer service in Germany. They will investigate the incident and answer to you directly.
Could you please forward your e-mail address for contact to us (press@bahn.co.uk)?

On our website http://www.bahn.com/uk we provide the “Contact” section on top of the page with an General enquiry form for complains, requests etc.

Best regards

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Darren Cronian | 14 April, 2010 at 4:52 pm

@ Oliver

Thanks for leaving a response in the comments. I believe Kayt has got in touch with you and you are investigating the incident.

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Guido | 14 April, 2010 at 5:32 pm

Good that someone takes action….however, see what happens by the e-mail address Oliver gives here: Kayt should contact the press office of DB????…

Does this mean she gets a member-of-the-press preferred treatment? I believe she simply wants to signal that mothers of 5 year olds who travel with DB and get an accident want some decent attention…

Kayt is internet savvy, very internet savvy, and doesn’t succeed in getting contact with someone who is responsible. What about the other poor railroad travelers?

That’s one of the reasons I prefer my limo as long and as extensive as possible….

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Darren Cronian | 14 April, 2010 at 5:47 pm

@ Guido

It was the press office that I contacted on behalf of Kayt, so Oliver will be from that part of the company, and he’ll be able to forward the issue on to be dealt with on Kayt’s behalf. I think the problem is that Kayt lives in Germany, so she wouldn’t think about contacting the UK DB site for contact information.

I think what this raises is the issue over information on travel sites where the primary language is not English. They need to provide contact information in English, because it’s Europe, we can all live and work within the EU, so they should accept that people not necessarily speak their main language.

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Kayt Sukel | 14 April, 2010 at 5:54 pm

And @Oliver, I know I already said this in a private email, but thank you for getting in touch. I very much appreciate it.

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Guido | 16 April, 2010 at 2:03 pm

@Darren

I’m trying to make two points here:

1) As we noticed already, railroad operators seem to live in the middle ages of communication and can learn a lot about communications in general, be it in their home language or English.

If in a European country let them have their say in their local language. We have computer generated translation sites becoming more and more popular these days. Let the operators at least give some valuable contact information on their websites.

Let them have some real sensible people operate the telephone in stead of a call center somewhere in India…not because I would suggest such call center couldn’t handle a call professionally, but because I believe consumers deserve to the point and caring people and I believe no one in India could offer the same insight as somebody in Germany…

2) Is a point I hinted at already in my prior comment: DB should offer the same customer service to all its customers and not only to Kayt because she is a member of the press, or knows a member of the press.

It is not an idea from myself but from @samDaams who voiced this at a ITB 2010 forum that happened to stuck with me (and possibly also with Kayt)

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Jack | 18 April, 2010 at 12:52 pm

It’s quite disconcerting that nobody approached Kayt in what could have been a serious accident. Would there be the same nonchalance if her son had got really hurt with internal injuries that weren’t immediately visible?

What if she’d have had to bring her son to hospital, and Deutsche Bahn had caused the accident by negligence and exacerbated it via the neglect shown at the scene?

Possibly a one-off occurrence, but definitely worrying for any traveler, as this would indicate you’re on your own if something unfortunately occurs.

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Kayt Sukel | 23 April, 2010 at 2:20 pm

To follow up, a representative from Deutsche Bahn, Christina Meyer, contacted me today. DB did an investigation of the incident. The train employee they talked to said she *did* offer me a doctor.

I didn’t hear it but with all the hubbub with people getting on and off the train, that is possible. I probably would have heard her if she had gotten off the train to check on me.

They were unable to find the person who I tried to speak with at the station so that was a dead end.

The good news is that the representative said the incident will help them with future trainings. All in all, it was a good phone call. And I was happy they investigated and took the time to let me know the outcome. I do still wish, however, it had happened at the point of incident.

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Darren Cronian | 23 April, 2010 at 3:38 pm

Thanks for the update Kayt. Like you I am glad they investigated the incident.

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Mike Jones | 11 September, 2010 at 1:42 am

We just got back to our home in Omaha, Nebraska from our trip to Paris and Rome. After five days in Paris we took the Rail Europe Train #227 at 6:52, with a Comfort Sleeper, on September 5th to Rome Italy out of Bercy station in Paris. All the trains were old and ours was almost horrible. No help with luggage to board, rooms very cramped, no dinning, no bar, no meals. We were informed there was a mini bar three cars away. When I went there it was a room at the end of the car (long line) with two people serving hot beer/sodas, packaged sandwiches and crackers. Had to beg for ice packets and they would only allow one plastic sack per person to carry the “treats.” The sandwiches were terrible and the beverages warm. In addition, the bathrooms were filthy, no toilet seats, and they ran out of toilet paper. I will never take your trains again.

We spoke with some people in the compartment next to us who came in from London through Saint Lazare with a good experience. They were also very disappointed with the train and station. Lots of stops and it was an hour late. We were warned by the conductor to be sure and lock our cabin door before going to bed. The service and conditions were very bad. We were glad to get off your train.

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