Renfe Reviews 4,614

My ticket was valid for 3 months. When I was trying to leave for the airport, a middle-aged lady started shouting at me in Spanish because I crossed the gates with another person, since gates didn’t open for me. I told her I didn’t understand Spanish, but she replied that I was in Spain and people here only speak Spanish. This is an awful, inhuman way to treat people. Spain has poor customer service, especially with their national train services. It’s disgusting.

Renfe delay caused us to cancel our plans and we we had to pay for the bad service. We were revelling from Barcelona to valencia and booked a train ticket. We were staying in calafell and got an earlier train from there to make it to sants Station on time. The train was 20 minutes late which would have only given us 10 minutes time to make our train. Then we stopped and were told there would be a wait of 20 minutes. We missed our train and asked if we could get the next one. We were told we'd have to pay 130 euro to get it. We explained that renfe delayed us. But wouldn't let us on the trip unless we paid. Their fault, we missed the dinner we had planned, and we had to pay for that.

I was very surprised to see all the negative ratings. We had a mix-up in our tickets, owing to my purchase on a third-party site, and the customer service gentleman in Granada was phenomenal. He spent half an hour trying to help us find us alternate transportation when there appeared to be no seats on the train. At the last possible minute he and the gentleman in charge of the train found seats for us. We were beyond grateful and wish we had a way to thank them in person.

Es horrible el olor a orine dentro de los vagones del Renfe que se dirige a Parla, desde Sol

Alicante to Valencia , worst ride ever
Late , no water in bathroom no toilet paper

Unfortunately, not possible to give a 0. Arrived at the airport at 18. Went straight to buy train tickets but all the machine were broken down. Thankfully you can use visa to tap in and out. Train was supposed to arrive in 5 min. After 30 minutes had passed screen was still displaying arrival in 5 minutes. And then magically it started displaying 1 minute, so I had high hopes for that. Nooooope, 40 minutes later (1:10 minutes in total) I am still here waiting for the train.

UPDATE: After 1:30 hour of waiting they told us that everything is cancelled. To make matters even worse I was charged for the ticket although I left from the same station and I had to get an overpriced UBER, as the demand due the cancellation was extremely high. You would think it would be easy to issue a refund but NOOOOOO, if you try to issue a refund they ask for a ticket (never received one as you can tap the card to get in) and if you try to submit a complaint the page “miraculously” does not work.

If I can give negative 100 stars I would. This company is pure garbage. The people who run this company are the same. I have tried to contact them, requested a refund and call but no help whatsoever. I never used the ticket for a return trip since I was sick. This scumbag company refuses to refund me my money. They can see I never used the ticket because it was never scanned. If anyone reads this, do not use this company to travel. Very rude customer service in person and a website that never works. I STRONGLY STRESS DO NOT USE THIS GARBAGE, SCUMBAG COMPANY!!!!

I travelled from Madrid to Jaén in October 2023 on a Renfe Media Distancia train that was around an hour late in arriving at my destination.

During the journey there was no information on board about the reasons for the delay nor about the likely time of arrival. Indeed, there was no Renfe guard going through the carriages to whom I could have directed these questions.

Following this experience, in November 2023 I attempted to obtain compensation for the delayed journey in accordance with Renfe processes.

In the first instance, the Renfe website through which compensation claims should be made was barely functional and I only succeeded after a number of attempts in both Spanish and English.

Since then I have had a number of e-mails from Renfe customer services but no compensation.

As it is now over 3 months since I made my application for compensation, I have little hope that this matter will be resolved and am profoundly disappointed and frustrated with the whole process.

On my future trips to Spain it's probably best now to avoid using Renfe completely and instead use Alsa bus, which in my experience is far more reliable and cheaper.

Avlo - complete Garbage - don't use this train.

Went from Barcelona to Madrid on the Iryo - no problems.
Return journey on the Avlo - 30 Euros per bag extra- might as well have bought first class elsewhere.
Rude staff, horrible customer service, uncomfortable train

Arrived at BCN Sants with plenty of time to catch AVE to Figueras. Huge queues in front of ticket office so tried machine. Three attempts to buy ticket, entering family details !!! and passport number !!! Card reader defective. Tried another machine. Didn't like non-spanish names. Last machine worked - but by then had missed the train.

Incorrect time tables, travel times, no wifi , no service, no customer satusfaction. We traveled from Barcelona to Figueres, a 135 km. trip lasted 3 hours, no information about alternatives. What a bummer.

3.5 stars. I have been on two round-trip journeys recently, from Sevilla to cities less than 2 hours away. The first departure was delayed by 45 minutes. Two others were delayed by 10 and 20 minutes, with the last one arriving at the destination almost a half-hour late. Onboard, the coaches were clean. Good signage for finding your seat number. Seats had footrests, coat hooks, easy-to-operate sunshades and tray tables with cup/bottle holders. The information screens display the destination, next station, temperature, time, coach number, a map showing the route and train speed. Unfortunately, the screen on the first journey froze after an hour. At least the oral announcements continued, in Spanish & English.

We had 20 mins to change at Madrid when travelling Barcelona to Malaga. The train was 10 min late so we had just 10 min to find our connection. 500 people get off the train but there is no one to ask where to catch our connection. When we found it we had missed it by 5 min.
There was train in 1 hour later but the renfre website would not accept a booking.
We found a hotel and tried to book for the next day. The website was awful and did not confirm our booking so we tried again. We ended up booking twice for the same train because confirmation only came through 3 hours later.
Overall, 2 sets of tickets + hotel was over 400 euros.

The website is so difficult to use, I had to try and complete the checkout process six times because I kept getting generic error messages. Apple Pay also doesn’t seem to work for me on the Renfe website, even though it works on every other website. They really need to improve the user experience

I have lost 300€ due to cancelled train 2 moths ago. Filled not even one refund request. Total ignorance, no custommer support regarding refunds.

VERY bad experience, no information about canceled train provided, 4 different renfe staff members provided false information, that there will be more trains that day after spending an hour waiting to get talk with a staff in a line. Finally after spending one more hourin the line 5th staff said, thst there will be no more trains that day, situation started in 13pm.

My daughter was taken ill on the 6:45 train from Barcelona to Granada. The staff were fantastic. The head honcho organised an ambulance to meet us in Lleida, where she was taken to the (very caring) hospital. We were due to travel from Granada to Madrid 2days later, but spent the time in Lleida. Renfe refunded the full cost of the (non-refundable) tickets, and everyone involved was a credit to Renfe - caring and helpful. When we finally took the train from Lleida to Madrid, it was absolutely fine - clean, on time. Love Renfe.

If you ever take the train early at 7:30am to Barcelona, beware of rude staff managing the access to the trains. They are rude and lack empathy. Specially the latin lady (not form Spain) in that station (Atocha). Rude, to say the least.

Renfe has the most godawful wifi service on its high speed rail. It's all but useless. Renfe also had a system wide outage the day of our travel. Tickets couldnt be booked online or at the teller. Bathrooms on the train are incredibly dirty. Iryo is cheaper bit was far superior compared to Renfe in my experience.

These thieving cowboys owe me money. Three months ago they cancelled my train shortly before it was due to depart. I filled out the online form for a refund and they haven’t even bothered to respond. The legal timeframe they have to respond is three months. I am still waiting for me refund for my three tickets and see no sign of ever getting it.

I have been booking group tickets with Renfe for so many years and still, I have nothing good to say about their service. Not even once it has happened that the booking process, the payment process, after-purchase customer service etc, etc has gone smoothly.
This time, I had booked 42 people on a train to Malaga and guess what, renfe as usual never informed me that the train timing has changed and now train leaves one hour late. I found out about this just because I casually went on the website and saw the train did not appear. This company guarantees poor customer service. This one start I have given is just for the sake of writing this review .. because there is no way to give NO Star.