Thalys Reviews 677

Absolute disaster! Don't even bother taking! Not helpful train staff, rude! Collected €456, 14 April 2018 (trip from Paris to Brussels), from me and family and had no seat assigned! Had to walk the length of the train twice to finally get a seat, while my 2 under 11 kids were near tears. Please avoid like a plague! They are terrible. How they are in business is beyond me!
If there is a minus 100 stars, I would give them.

Terrible experience. Took a train from Brussels to Paris. One train was cancelled. No explanation or apology was given. Instead 2 trainloads of passengers were squeezed into one train. You had to stand or sit on the floors for the duration of the trip which was almost 2 hours. No space for luggage either. Took another train from Paris to Amsterdam. Was delayed by half an hour. Also the journey terminated at the Schipol airport instead of Amsterdam central station as stated on the ticket. We were told to make our own way to central station.

Stumbled upon the reviews below an hour before my trip with Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris. Imagine the chills I got suddenly realizing I was about to embark on a trip with the train from hell.

And imagine my relief when I discovered that the staff was friendly and all spoke English. That the wifi worked flawlessly. That the train was on time and clean. That the seat was comfortable. That there was no problem understanding where to put my luggage (same as all other trains, but a review below made it sound like you needed to be Hercule Poirot to figure it out).

There was nothing to complain about.

Never before have I seen a company get slaughtered as heavily as Thalys on this site. I know one journey is not much to go on, but the amount of negative reviews indicates a totally disfunctional company. Not so. I'd take this train again in a heartbeat. The experience is ten times better than going to the airport, and you arrive bang in the city center. All that for EUR 70 (first class). Hard to beat.

Filthy train, rude staff at station and on board, big con with new 'Comfort' (no food but they don't tell you) and 'Premium'(food) classes. Will NEVER use again.

There is a recurring pattern here. After traveling by car from the Netherlands to Paris and back for holidays for several times, attractive offers for Thalys train tickets get my attention. On the website, I am indeed able to find and select those tickets. Upon the moment of paying, however, the website says that tickets for that price are not available any more and offers the next higher priced tickets. Then I remember why I end up choosing the car most of the times, instead. This has been going on for several years now.
To be honest, however, if you accept to fall for the trick, the train ride itself is not too bad. (I am used to Dutch service standards. Tip: avoid having to make use of it.) That is why I rate Thalys more than 1 star.

Thalys webiste it so horrible that you cannot believe your eyes. You choose a fare, provide all the details, and then you get a message saying that the fare is no longer available. Of course, refreshing does not solve the problem, because they do not hold the ticket for a few minutes once you've chosen it (which all serious companies do to give you time to put in your details) - so this can happen multiple times in a row.
After trying for more than an hour to buy a train ticket online, I had to call them to book, and of course accept a 9euro added fee for booking over the phone (which is ironic, since I was ONLY able to book over the phone). I don;t know if this is their business model, but it is horrible!

Unfortunately, they are a monopoly on some routes (I have no idea how the EU has allowed that) so they can afford to offer crappy service at expensive prices

Do NOT take Thalys when overbooked.

I have never seen before such a crowded train with a SO impolite "train-guy".

In the middle of the way I was considering jumping out on the next stop to take a plane.

[Amsterdam-Paris]

Comfortable by train to Paris? DO NOT TAKE THALYS. Their service is a complete disaster. Last week I had to travel from Paris to Amsterdam because of flight cancellations. I purchased a one-way ticket for 135 EUR on Thalys but had to travel along on the cold, crowded balcony for the duration of the journey, three hours. The conductor promised to look out for a seat, but I did not see the chap again after departure from Paris. Absolutely mediocre, third-class travel in the 21st century. I thougth third-class had been abolished since 1950 already? Confronted their customer service department which is a joke. They do not seriously address complaints. If you can save yourself from having a bad travel experience, do not travel on Thalys but take the plane (or even a coach) instead! Horrible, disgusting experience. Their slogan "Bienvenue chez nous", ha, nothing but a bloody farce!

I bought a first class ticket online last night; as a business traveler I need to have printed copies of receipts. At Brussels-Midi station office I requested agent to do so - but he refused. Went on to be loud and rude in an attempt to embarass me! I am asked to complain to the train manager which I do (I also tweet about it); she apologises politely and takes a note of my case and reports it. But twitter customer service agent reverts saying agent was right in not printing receipt for me!

In fact they even went on to imply on twitter that I should be happy I was “allowed on board...” and be thankful to the gracious authority of the train staff! All for requesting a printed copy of my receipt?!

What an embarassingly distressing experience! :(

We traveled from Amaterdam to Brussels in the first class coach. The attendant , Hakim, was extremely rude...completely spoilt tour travel experience. How can customer service level be so pathetic...never seen this kind of behaviour before. Their employees must understand that they are not doing anyone any favour...their salaries come from the ticket money that customers pay...

make sure you get seat reservation or you will be sitting between wagons on jump seat

I use Thalys twice a month and it's fair to say that the wi-fi a joke. Please do not communicate this as a USP because in reality it's frustrating to find out your rebooting more than you should have been working.

On my yesterday trip the 12.34 from Amsterdam to Brussels got cancelled without any communication whatsoever.

You get access to the next train but no guarantee for seating so not able to get any work done either. Looking for alternatives.

I would put a 0 star if this was possible. In reality, we choose Thalys because this is the only existing option to transit between Amsterdam and Paris.. and there is no existing competition from Ryanair or Easy jet YET.
Besides being highly pricy, the trains run in an unorganised way from Amsterdam central or Schiphol. Meaning no clear display of the platform until 5min before it arrives (and I am generous here). No Thalys staff to guide you either. For example today my train overall stayed 1 min on the platform for a 16h34 schedule from Schiphol to Paris and I missed this 135 euros train today like that. Less than 1 min later, it was not displayed anymore and other intercity trains ran on the platform. I had hope that the controller for the next train could have some pity, as i was told at the Thalys counter...but he made me pay 124 euros for the same trip.
Trip where I have no seat assigned and on my receipt it just says "no ticket". Like an outcast that fraud to be on this 0 star train.. I am pretty angry and disappointed of the lack of compassion and understanding.
In clear you pay 259 euros for being sat next to the door and also told that they cannot do anything for you. That this is your Fault.
AVOID THALYS, better the car sharing, having nice people respecting you !!

The worst experience I have ever had. The ticket master was very rude and impolite. I along with my cousins we were heading to food bar to have some coffee and sandwiches but on the way one of the ticket master asked for our tickets, which is fine but when we said we got tickets but we have left it in our seats he replied to us syaing that we need tickets and you should go and get back the tickets or you should carry your seats. Carry your seats??? That doesn't even make sense. The ticket master was very rude and he seemed to have a very unpleasant behaviour. Never going to travel with Thayls again.

Thalys has some of the worst customer service I've ever experienced in Europe, North America or South Asia.

My wife and I pre-purchased tickets from Paris to Brussels. The tickets say to arrive a couple minutes before departure. We were running late, but arrived about 6 minutes before departure time. We got to the station and asked where to line up for the train. The Thalys staff member only spoke French despite their claim all staff speak fluent English. They could not tell us what to do so they went to find another staff member. While they did that, we stood there and our train without us. Then someone came who spoke English and told us we were late and that we'd have to buy new tickets to catch the next one. We tried to explain and they just walked away and said to talk to customer service.

Customer service refused to refund us or give us new tickets. They charged us €300 to get the next train.

When we got home we did a chargeback with Visa on the tickets they refused to let us use at their fault. Thalys lied on the chargeback investigation citing things that never happened and we lost the claim, in the end Thalys put us at a loss of $450CAD after fees.

The trains are decent but you better hope you don't have to deal with an actual human being, because none exist at this company.

I would fly easyjet over any Thalys service. The train was delayed, which meant we missed our flight. They offered a 20 percent refund. When I declined, they stopped replying to all messages.

Just an awful, awful service

Traveled from Paris tot bruxelles in friday and back on Sunday. Friday was horrible, there was a Fire at 13:00 in the afternoon so no worries i thouged my train is leaving at 21:35 so they have like 7 hours to fix the delays. Boy was I wrong. The train an hour earlier was suspended and but that was only announced one hour later than they original departure hour. There was no info about my train. In the end they put Everyone in a train that left at 22:20. Chaos and no information at all during the wait.
My Road back was alsof full of surprises. Train left at 17:13, i was 2 minutes before departure there as announced, but no gate information was given. By the time I was at there right place 17:13 exactly, they already sounded the departure. The train stood there smiling at me and they didnt let me in anymore. Since i didnt boughed the lost expensive ticket they only told you ll need a new one and yes that will cost you 106 euro's. Thank you thalys!

I purchased Thalys' round trip Comfort 1 ticket, their most expensive option. It cost €230, the price of a plane ticket. I did this because it included wifi and a ameal, and a better working space.

The trip was worthless. The wifi was so bad that I had to buy data on my cell phone to check e-mails. They NEVER served my meal, even though it is "included" and "tailored to my trip". I traveled with hunger for 2 hours.

On top of this, the bathroom had no water. I could not shave. I could not even urinate and wash my hands. Thalys is absolutely worthless. I will never buy first class again.

I officially hate Thalys.

Our tickets from Paris were without sit numbers because of overbooking.

I was not worried, since I assumed that Thalys had some sort of solution in mind.
- No, we had to sit on the floor throughout 90% of the travel.
Naturally, ridiculously strong toilet smell had nicely framed my Thalys experience, just in case if I had any doubts.

Greed is good, but it should come in some sort of proportion. I have paid 160EUR to sit on the floor in the smelly, dirty and overcrowded train – silly me.

I use the Thalys several times a month. In general the service is really good. The first class provide you some extra attentions such as the breakfast at your seat. The new lounge at Paris and Brussels are comfortable. In case of trouble you receive i-notification on your mobile (can be improved with a faster message and the origin of the problem to better plan your journey). Checkin is faster compare to airlines. It's looks more as commuter airlines in the US .An improvement to do is to allocate a seat when you take another train (depending of your ticket level) that the forseen one. Now you just need to take one and wait to see if it's occupied or not and in the worst case need to move three four times.