The SJ, the Swedish railway company, shows how customer service should work. On Tuesday 5 September Wim and I took the highspeed train from Gothenborg to Stockholm, which was scheduled to leave around half past ten. It left about half an hour late, which was annoying but can happen on a track with a length of nearly 400k. If communicated appropriately, and it was, you can happily live with it.
Compensation
If you take a train in the Netherlands, say from The Hague in the southwest to Leeuwarden in the north of the country where I live, the good news is that there is a direct line. It takes more than two-and-a-half hours on this 160k track though, so you might need to visit the toilet on your train journey. Quick word of advice: don’t.
There might be two toilets on board if you are lucky. If you are extremely fortunate, they might both be working but the chances of either of them being clean are dismal.
I once took that train and the single toilet was beyond disgust. It was like you had skipped the port to hell and were already at its centre. When I called the customer service of the Dutch railways, the NS, the guy said that there was nothing they could do about it. End of.
So my advice would be to get off along the way in Zwolle or Amersfoort and then take the next train. Most of the stations in the Netherlands have excellent public toilets for about 70 eurocents.
Not too long after we were on our way I received another bit of communications from SJ Within four working days, we were going to be compensated 25% of our fare because the toilets at the end of our compartment weren’t working. There were many other toilets we could use, and the state of those were impeccable. I mean you don’t need to make a mess of the toilet area; it’s quite easy to keep it clean.
Do you have any recommendations for us? In which countries should we definitely take the train and in which maybe not? Have you had any excellent train journeys? I can’t wait to hear.
Leave a Reply