Austrian Federal Railways Reviews 225

Extremelly bad quality services for the price. I firstly used a night train of OBB from Zurich to Vienna, the electrical outlets were not working (for a journey of 10.5 hours!!!!) and it was almost impossible to sleep since we were too many people together in very limited space. Next, I used a day train from Vienna to Zurich, the train left as somewhere outside Salzburg, then they brought us to the Salzburg main station by buses and then there was not a train to leave(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) The next train was in two hours and had an extra 25 minutes delay. I think all this was due to some construction work, which is totally unacceptable.

It's a bit late for me to write this but as I get older, sharing experiences with one another has gained more and more in importance in life.

My journey to Austria began in late August in 2016. I missed my 2nd bus to Salzburg because my 1st bus was one hour late. So more problems ensued. I needed to catch another bus to Salzburg, and thus missed my next bus that would go from Salzburg to Hallstatt. I really wanted to visit Hallstatt at that time so I booked the same 2-way ticket for the next day. I was really frustrated with the situation because it wasn't even my fault. So I contacted the customer service of OBB in the hope that they would grant me a refund. For the record, I didn't expect a positive response from them but guess what, they responded really quickly that day and refunded my unfortunately unused ticket. They were very polite and to me, it was such a fond memory of Austria. It wasn't much, like 30€ but I can't never forget the act of goodwill that I received that day.

I feel sorry that many people don't have the same experience with this company. But in any circumstance, we should all be courteous to others despite all the mishaps that happened upon us during the journey.

For someone who takes public transport quite often, I must say that I haven’t met such a rude staff before. I took the train from Rosenheim, at 21.47 to Hamborg.

We were already met with rudeness at the door to enter the train, later on the SAME lady who “greated” us at the door, comes to our cabin, with the same rude and pretty negative attitude. Some of us doesn’t have german as our language, and were mocked when we didn’t understand - she spoke German with an Italian accent, which for some of us, was quite hard to understand, specially when you don’t speak German in the first place.

Beside the mocking a fault had occurred with our cabins, which we tried to correct with the staff lady, but she wasn’t cooperative at all, and instead of keeping an positive attitude, as expected for workers with contact to customers, she kept her negative attitude and got angry.

You must think that this was the last you would see of her, but later on, when we all sat in our cabin - were we solved the problem ourselves after talking with the other passengers - she comes around, and starts telling us to be quit, in what I would say, a very angry tone, even though we all sat quietly at our phones.

However I must admit that the staff from Hamburg - Rosenheim was very sweet.

Extremely rude staff. We asked to be moved into a different cabin so we wouldn’t be with any people we didn’t know, because of corona. The Italian staff lady, short middle aged women with dark hair, got very upset with us and told us it wasn’t possible. After talking to a person right next to us, we moved without her permission since it was easily possible. After that she came running to our cabin and yelled at us, asking me if I had a problem, for no reason. We literally just sat there and she came bursting in. All in all a terrible experience. I won’t ever use Obb again. Disclaimer, the other people I’ve met working here weren’t as bad as her, but she messed it up for everyone else. Her rudeness was incredible.

I would like to submit a complaint about my experience on 22 July around 12:30 at ÖBB Reisezentrum located in Europaplatz 2 (Wien Mitte), in Vienna.
First, when I came if was THREE customer agents there and only ONE customer. One of the customer agents was talking to the customer, the other two were staying together and were watching their mobile phones. I was staying and waiting for 5 or more minutes. A customer agent with a blond hair (finally) came to me.
That lady with blond hair is called Inessa (or "Innessa S." if I recall correctly). She was explaining to me how the ticket machine is working and after some of my questions, she said: "It makes no sense talking to you" and she simply left. I asked her name, and she refused to tell it, but she has a badge and therefore I read her name (also, she was trying to hide her name on a badge after I asked her name). The second big lady with long black hair in a ponytail was even worse. She has heard our discussion with Inessa, and she started to shout at me, to interrupt me and even insult me with offensive words. She said me that "I am stupid" and she also said that "ÖBB does not care about clients like you because millions of people are using our ticket machines". Since the beginning of our conversation she started to insult me and she made declarations that I said something to Inessa that I have never said before. She was literally attacking me with the words and she misinterpreted my words eventhough she was not a part of my discussion with Inessa. I was literally shocked with her way of communication and I told her that it is not acceptable, but she simply did not care. She refused to tell me her name, and she even did not have a badge. She has an ÖBB white T-shirt and looked like a manager there (she was sitting on the last right counter). Her behaviour was so outrageous that I was not sure about her emotional stability. I feel that I was harassed by her.
I think that both ladies simply hate people. They are not only unprofessional. I simply do not sure whether they are mentally healthy. I am wondering whether ÖBB check the emotional stability of its employees? It is a shame that such people are working in the customer service of ÖBB. I really think they can be dangerous for other people and behaviour that demonstrate should not be acceptable in any developed country. In a good company, such people should not work. OeBB should watch video recording on that day from 12:00 to 13:00 and see how its employees behave. I am afraid that this lady with black hair is not normal.

We bought tickets for a trip in june, and even though the train was not cancelled, we got a voucher from óbb because I wrote to them, that our prime minister prohibited us from traveling to Austria. Just great costumer service!

Friendly staff and always on time! Thats all I need.

We purchased 3 tickets from Salzburg to Vienna. On our way to the train station my friend broke her arm in 2 places. We had to go to the hospital so we missed all the train departures. OBB refused to refund us those tickets.

An absolute criminal enterprise (and keep in mind that it's run by the Austrian state!). I got zero beef with their train-services, cars, standard etc. The ticket-ordering etc. all went fine, general staff at the stations is friendly and patient BUT..., their claims-office not only exhibits ZERO service and quality when expediting claims by customers, but has so far acted even CRIMINAL by DEFRAUDING me for my reimbursement. As in INTENTIONALLY! My claim for reimbursement for the train which I had a ticket for and that left Wien-Meidling 6 minutes earlier(!!) than according to the app on my phone which should have brought me straight to Hamburg, was for the first not paid in over THREE MONTHS(!) until I(!) asked OEBB, why I had not heard from them. The office then apologized with the explanation that there "had been a gaffe" in the handling of the case (or in other words, didn't do ANYTHING about it for three months!) and that the money for the reimbursement for the lost and newly paid seat-reservations Wien - Hamburg and Hamburg - Denmark were on the way to my account. Shortly after I received about HALF of the claim I made which was originally 61,08 € (the transfer from OEBB was only 34,85 €!!). When sending my (paper-)tickets for the seat-reservation to the OEBB, I sent ALL the seat-reservation tickets - the ones for the original intended journey as well as for the seat-reservations that I had to pay IN ADDITION for the new journey. However I explained to them that for the original journey Wien - Hamburg, I had purchased a CHEAP standard seat-reservation whereas I was forced (due to a lack of standard seat-reservation tickets available) to buy an EXPENSIVE sleeping-car ticket (about 30 € versus about 3 € for the cheaper one!) for the alternative train-journey, so I could be on that train! When I sent in ALL the tickets, I explained this in the papers for my claim BEFORE the reimbursement took place. However the claims-office apparently chose to deliberately ignore this fact and to DEFRAUD me as a customer by reimbursing me for the ORIGINAL seat-reservation! What's more, I got ZERO detailed information on what they based this fraudulent reimbursement on, something that I requested from the employee that I had contact with by e-mail (not the accounting-office within the claims-office) after the money-transfer. After almost two weeks of waiting for an explanation and the remaining claim to be transferred to my account, there was NO response to my letter!!! AT ALL!!! I subsequently put up a deadline for those two issues and informed OEBB claims-office in a final e-mail, that I would post this story with a rating on trustpilot for others to be warned, plus to start a case with the EU-consumer protection agency. The deadline (end of December) has now passed 3 days ago, but NOTHING has been sent nor the remaining amount submitted to my account! Hence, this state-run company is criminally and illegally withholding the money I had to pay up front and in GOOD FAITH due to the above mentioned issues with their trains! As mentioned, I have had zero issues with trains (aside from smaller delays etc) nor with their staff etc. who was courteous, professional and kind (when not considering the event in Wien-Meidling that wrecked my entire plans for the return-journey). But their claims-office is utterly and completely indifferent, uninterested, incompetent and acting CRIMINAL and arbitrarily in any way they please! I'm now looking at the process for filing a claim with the EU-consumer protection. I'm pretty sure that the people in this office are thinking that "if we pay half, people will not complain about the other half due to the time and effort it will take to make the extra claim for about 28 €. Well guess, what? I WILL...! Stay away from this CORRUPT company if you are not interested in "being given the runaround"!

Worst train experience. Very expensive and you end up standing the whole trip because all of the seats are reserved and half of the people are just walking around the train. Greedy company that overbook seats.

Worst shitt (the spellin g is incorrect because the stupid phone wouldn't let me post this review if I haf that word)I've ever travelled with. Seems like they don't know that there is something called time. First time with the nightjet to Vienna they came half an hour late for no reason. With the nightjet to Hamburg on the way home they came 2 hours late, no reason in this case either. This caused me to miss next train to Copenhagen. Many of the other passsengers had the same problem. To give people some advice, do not ever take the nightjet if you don't have a day over. You cannot be sure they know which day it is.

Instead of a special train only for a Night of Museums, I had taken a normal train by recommendation (!!) of the ÖBB worker, having the "Museum Ticket" with me (it allows to travel to the Museum by train outside of Vienna), was nevertheless fined.

Contacted Customer Support, they just ignored my concern with standard reply. They don't care about customers.

Beware, don't pay the ticket fine on the go, then you'll have more chances to fight with them afterwards.

Apart from some failings (due to the Italian or the DB influence?), Austrian Railways are mostly working well. They are at least helpful and prone to help when things go wrong (if you speak German).

Very punctual & clean railway company.

Biggest idio** on the planet. Especially baby Jesus lookalike motherf**** on their terrible customer service right next to the terminal 12. I was there with my girlfreind and we payed cca 245 euros tickets

for Prag. In the meantime her father died and we needed to go back immediately. Above mentioned idio* was really rude and didnt wanted to refund our money stating that tickets are not refundable while according to the Austrian law of administration or some s*it like that refund is a must !!!! Advise to all people - Go on the main station avoid OBB as you are able to obtain much more cheaper tickets. Dont let their comertials confuse you just search and you will find the best solution. Example : If I was about to do that I would pay these tickets 100 euro not 245.

Horrible customer service, they were really rude and unhelpful and the second time I tried to call they hung up. Their website is misleading, the booking says it is all the way to Prague but the ticket they provide is only to Nurnberg. When I emailed them about this their very arrogant response was “I regret that you find our ÖBB Ticketshop misleading. We have tried to make the new ticketing as intuitive as possible and to optimize it to the needs of our customers. Unfortunately, we did not succeed with you.” Any time someone starts an apology with “I’m sorry that you ...” they’re not really apologising, they’re deflecting responsibility.

Don’t book with them. I’m raising my complaint with fma.gv.at

Do not book with this company. Worst customer service ever. It’s obvious the company doesn’t care about their workers or customers at all

Worst customer care. The lost and found should be called left and stolen. Would be interesting how low is the percentage of found stuff. Forgot a small suitcase at the last station at the Vienna airport and even thought there I notified the train attendant after 3 minutes, it got officially stolen by an unknown person.

We are from Canada. We took the night train from Vienna to Venice. We had a private couchette. While we were sleeping somebody had opened the lock from outside and stole all of our money. We complained to the company and they keep changing what they say every time which makes the situation very frustrating and suspicious. They make up stories and change them next day. We lost around 1000 Euros in cash. I am writing this review because I do not want this to happen to anybody else. This ruined our vacation. I am a very careful person and I never thought this would happen to me. OBB is telling me that this is totally normal and obvious that any lock can be opened and manipulated from outside and we do not think it was necessary to tell you. Please do not take any trips with them since they are totally dishonest. I am not a heavy sleeper but I am sure somebody with lots of experience has done it and took the money from 3 different locations.

Horrible night train. They don't even switch off the light in the night. Poor ticket booking website. I was unable to book a ticket in sleeper car. Moreover my ticket had next to no information other than the start and end point of my journey and the dates of travel. Feel sick thinking about this experience.