Originally Posted by
Aviatrix
I've just had one of my worst rail trips ever...
I was stuck at Hengelo (Netherlands) for two hours waiting for a train to Germany which simply never came, with complete chaos and confusion at the station and zero information being provided to stranded passengers.... I eventually got as far as Osnabrück (two hours late) where I was delayed further as my connecting train to Hamburg was running some 40 minutes late.
Sitting on the Hamburg train I overheard some conversations along the lines of "just under an hour again - typical", which prompted me to search the bahn.de web site to see what this "one hour" thing was all about... and I discovered that there is, apparently, an EU-wide regulation similar to the now famous 261/2004 for air travel, which gives passengers a right to a partial refund of their fare if their train is running late.... 25% for delays of 60-120 minutes, 50% if a delay is more than 120 minutes. Claims have to be submitted to the ticket-issuing train company (Deutsche Bahn in my case), and I found a claim form online which I have now completed.
Has anyone here ever claimed successfully for train delays under this EU regulation?
I was on a DB CityNightLine train which arrived in Rome 2 hours and 2 minutes late. I submitted a claim to DB, but got absolutely zilch, except for some standard blurb in German saying (I think) something about events outside of their control. This rankled somewhat since the train departed 30 minutes late from Munich (announced as delay in preparing the train, so DB's fault), precipitating further delays down the line (missed path on high speed line in Italy, causing the greater delay).