Deutsche Bahn AG Reviews 5,257

WORST TRAIN EVER!!!! I BOUGHT FIRST CLASS TICKETS AND THEY DONT GIVE YOU A SEAT!!!! Its a scam. i bought first calss tickets and you cannot seat in first class becuase you have to buy a seat separately. so why do they charge me for first class? this train is managed by dumb people please find another train!! nobody is willing to help at all i called many times they all say sorry and thats it.

We travelled during Easter holiday from Warzawa to Berlin Hauptbahnhof at April 20 th 2025 11:00.

1) 2 weeks before our journey, we received an email about changes of the trip. We were informed that alternativ way was to take a bus from Frankfurt (Oder) to Berlin. The information in My Order and the app did not show what we should do or whether we should do anything about this change. So we called DB customer service and had been waiting on the phone for more than 45 min (gave up) and then a new call 30 min to talk to a customer service staff.

2) during the trip in Poland, the driver honked loudly the whole trip - almost every 10 seconds in 4 hours, which were really really disturbing. We didn’t know why he did that and there was no explanations from the loud speaker at all.

3) the 1st class cabin is really really small, and 6 people with 2 bigger suitcases on the floor and 4 luggages on the shelves. There was no space at all.

4) one of the nearest toilet had green sign on the door but could not be opened.

First time my international train was cancelled just minutes before departure. Reisezentrum didn't offer any compensation. Today my expensive ticket from Belgium has no value because I missed train from Frankfurt because weird ordering trains on platform. By logic where is sign with name of train there should be train. Not in this company. I must bought another one and I'm not millionaire. Anyway platform is used for many trains. Only in Germany. Bad internet connection in trains. Cancelling night trains on way. Local trains are dirty. One star for train crew they are helpful and nice.

Bad service, unfriendly, and unhelpful, staff, expensive, even the Indian train service is better. You only get money back if a train is an hour later, the train stations are dirty.

If U can manage it in Germany do not use the German train system. Worst train service I have ever used and I have travelled all over the world l.

this is the worst service Germany has to offer, I just made a terrible experience being overcharged for their trains that run late/are cancelled completely

Tran constantly dirty, no room for suitcases, very cramped, always problems on the German lines. I prefer the French SNCF network

They were not able to collect the payment through direct debit for a train ticket. I would rather pay by card, but that was not possible. After their failure of payment, I was contacted only once by email in German (that went to the spam folder). After finding by chance the email, the deadline to make the payment was already over. After several tries (by phone and email) to solve the issue, I only received a German email template to contact another company Universum Inkasso. I tried to contact this other company without any reply. Eventually, my previous landlord shared with me some post sent by Universum Inkasso. And I could make the payment with interest.

VERY RUDE CUSTOMER SERVICE. And racist too. One employee yelled at my partner and I, because I was resting my foot against the seat edge, which it is very valid to tell customer to please keep not do that but obviously in a nice respectful way. This man absolutely yells at us horrifically, and the moment I said I don't speak German and asked if he could please translate he yelled at me even more that he was a German and he shouldn't have to speak English if he didn't want to. And then he threatened to fine each of us 150 euros which I found absolutely preposterous given that the only thing I did wrong was lean my foot on the edge of the seat. I've no idea what got his knickers in a twist but he seemed absolutely miserable.

I have a yearly BahnCard - this time they didn't send an invoice, bill nothing - I just got a letter from debt collection agency with an extra €30 added on. How can this be legal in Germany? Pretty sick.

Deutsche Bahn is notorious for being one of the worst railways companies. Do whatever you can to avoid taking their trains and for the love of everything that is dear to you, do NOT make a subscription with them.
And for what service? Trains always late, or cancelled, communication is beyond horrible. Honestly 1 star is a compliment. I never not had a problem with their trains.

Would give minus stars if that would be possible. Thanks to DB we got worst travelling experience and unfortunately worst impression of Germany as a country and I would never, ever recommend my friends to visit the country while local navigation requires using DB services. Starting from not logical, way too complex ticket purchase process for first time traveller (e.g., we couldn't buy family ticket in machine with one go or in web page it was possible to buy tickets that actually doesn't work without app). Till customer service, attitude, no English knowlege and way the issues are being solved. Bought wrong ticket on wrong time? Your issue, money won't be refunded but fines will be certainly added. Yes, I know - own fault that I'm not local and am not familiar with system and that I couldn't find DB representative on place who could help out. Customer is not a value but only cash cow for DB.
I would recommend DB employees knowledge sharing excursion to Oslo in Norway, where local train works perfecty starting from simple ticket purchase mechanism till kind employee attitude.

Train never came, no information in the app nor on their website about why. Bullsh*t company. never ever again

That company is an absolute disgrace, managed by a group of astonishingly incompetent fools who can’t even maintain a basic schedule. Their delays range anywhere from 15 minutes to a staggering three hours, making their level of inefficiency downright unacceptable. The entire operation is a failure, and frankly, the company deserves to collapse under the weight of its own incompetence. Every single person working there appears to be utterly incapable of performing even the most fundamental aspects of their job.

I am beyond frustrated with Deutsche Bahn (DB) and their handling of my case. In June 2023, due to their own system failure, I was charged twice for a subscription. As soon as I received a payment reminder, I took immediate action:

I sent 10 emails to DB – 0 responses
I called them multiple times, waited hours in line – no answer
I even visited their office in person, but they told me only the hotline could help.
After months of trying, I finally managed to reach DB by phone once, but the employee was extremely rude. She bluntly told me, "If you had an issue in 2023, you should have come in 2023. Now you have to pay everything." This was outrageous—I had been trying to resolve this since 2023!

Since DB completely ignored me, I had no other choice but to ask my bank for a partial refund. However, since a partial refund was not possible, the bank had to process a full refund instead.

Despite all my efforts to resolve this issue, DB ignored me for years. Then, in 2025, instead of fixing their mistake, they escalated my case to Riverty, adding insane penalties ("Strafgebühren") on top of the duplicate charge!

I contacted Riverty (the debt collection company) to explain the situation, but their response was simple:
"We can’t help you. You have to pay."

When I insisted that this was DB’s failure, I was told:
"If you have issues, talk to your lawyer."

Only after I sent several more emails in 2025, DB finally agreed to take back one of the subscriptions (which was their mistake in the first place). However, despite this, I am still forced to pay crazy penalties for their failure to respond in a timely manner.

This is completely unprofessional and disrespectful treatment of a customer. DB had years to fix their mistake but ignored me until it was too late. Their only focus seems to be taking money, even when the fault is theirs.

I strongly warn others—if DB makes an error, don’t expect any help. They will ignore you, delay for years, and then demand payment for their own failure!

My daughter travelled from Berlin to the Netherlands in october 2024. The first train she had to take from Berlin was cancelled, she then took another train but this one was delayed for hours. So she missed her first connection, and then her second connection. She finally arrived after midnight by herself at a station over an hour away from home. I drove over 1 hour to pick her up and then we drove over 1 hour back to our house. We live more or less 5 minutes away from the station she was supposed to arrive. I have contacted Deutsche Bahn numerous times but they will not reimburse her ticket or my petrol costs. Apparently this can only be done if you have a Deutsche Bahn account or login codes. As we are Dutch we do not have these. I am very disappointed in Deutsche Bahn.

I was super nervous due to reading reviews online about DB. I even tried to find long buses cross country in order to note have to get on a DB train. But I reluctantly had to book 2 trains in December 2024: Copenhagen > Hamburg and Amsterdam > Munich. To my surprise, both trains showed up and were running on time! These were both on different days. One train was also quite new and had LED screens. I'm putting my review out there as I was sifting through these reviews totally scared... so maybe they do sometimes work, and I have to give credit, everything was fine!

Reason for the one less star, we had pre booked tickets but not seat reservations. Understanding this, I separately booked seat reservations, they took my money, but I got no email or confirmation regarding this. Just ghosted. So we had to keep moving on the train. It was super hard to get a hold of DB, ended up going through insurance to get my money back

Train chief very rude and incompetent.
I was in first class my seat was already taken and the
Train chief told me to look for one by myself … German technology no longer exists .
NEVER AGAIN 👎👎👎👎👎👎

It was our first time traveling around Germany. We bought in Munich our metro tickets as expected, but it turns out they still needed to be validated, we didn't know about that. When we were leaving for the airport, the ticket inspectors came up to us and rudely started to pester and shout that we had violated the rules and hadn't validated our tickets and couldn't explain what had happened, even though we had paid for the tickets and showed receipts and dates, that everything was fine except for the validation. And the ticket inspectors didn't want to help us or explain how to do it, and in the end they wrote us a fine of 60 euros each and also the money we spent on the tickets. It was just robbery out of thin air or a way to make money - it was just disgusting. After that, we were simply disgusted by such service, unfriendly employees who didn't want to help, and overall a spoiled impression of Germany thanks to this situation and the rude metro employees.

Deutsche Bahn’s service is outright unacceptable. I’ve traveled twice from the Netherlands to Germany—once to Cologne and once to Berlin—and both journeys were a disaster. Timetables are a joke, with major disruptions that seem to happen without any backup plan that works. Replacement trains depart from random platforms, leaving passengers lost and wasting hours. This is not an occasional hiccup—it’s a system failing repeatedly. The lack of accountability and effort to fix these issues is shocking for such a major operator. This is a wake-up call: fix this mess now.

It’s 2 days after Christmas. DB decide to cancel a bunch of trains and we are all standing to each other, with no room to breath. That is highly dangerous. I guess some people have to die in order this company to take serious actions regarding the conditions of traveling.