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Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

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Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#661

Post by on_the_train »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #223

Unfortunately nowadays traveling with DB has become a game of Russian roulette. If you get lucky the train arrives at the destination ahead of time and if you're unlucky most probably a delay of 4+ hours and missing your connecting train. The main reason for this is lack of competition for DB in Germany. I used to date a guy who works at infra department in DB and based on what he told me, I couldn't believe how inef…

> internal departments which acts as separate entities to mimic competition and each department has to place bids among each other to get contracts (more bureaucracy) but then they have an IT

Same here, with a big German semiconductor player you all know. The IT department has to battle the non-it departments and external contractors for internal software dev jobs. It's a made up game, costing 70% of our work time (just the beurocracy).

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#662

Post by 7moritz7 »

I can't wait for Italo and Trenitalia to enter the German market, it can only get better. It's already at rock bottom for long distance. Short distance with foreign train companies is bearable (Westbahn, transdev, RXX...)

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#664

Post by lucb1e »

Svip wrote: post #83

> The train starts moving. The driver announces there are “issues around Bonn.” He does not specify what kind. No one asks. We have learned not to ask. This is one of those issues I keep mulling about; it seems train operators (and airliners for that matter) tend to avoid being technically specific about operation problems, and just say "problems" and - if they are kind - where the problem is. And I cannot decide whe…

> The argument is that travellers don't care why the train cannot move or why it is delayed

Deutsche Bahn does not think this is true and neither do I. If this was ever the thinking, they've performed or read studies and changed their mind

You can very clearly hear the drilled setup " grund dafür ist " rigidly being regurgitated every. single. time. a delay is announced. The middle words are (per my understanding) a formal way to say "because of" and it's not something you will hear in daily life, so I presume it's the output of a committee and corporate requires them to say this, no matter if they know anything more than "the signal is red". Whether they know or not, the detail is always at a level that sounds like malicious compliance. I'd rather they say "we don't know" or say nothing at all. And if they do know, I'd hope they make up a new sentence like "someone was spotted on the crossing up ahead after the barriers closed. Someone is checking the cameras to make sure it won't come to a collision" but we instead get the robotic "we have come to a stop on the grounds of person on track". It mimics their training samples and what colleagues got into the habit of saying so I guess they think it's good like this, but is not actually helpful

Idk what creates this useless information culture, but they clearly know that passengers do want this information

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#665

Post by integralid »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #568
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully the EU at least has regulations requiring compensation. On my last business trip to Europe I got 650 euros for an overnight delay. The last time I got delayed in the US I got a hearty "fuck off" from the gate agent.

On paper yes, but every time my flight was delayed in EU the airlines (KLM, Lufthansa, RyanAir) always had a cop out, weather, airport issues, etc. and I didn't get compensated. Even though other planes managed to fly in the same conditions.

If they refuse you can escalate or hire a company that will negotiate for some percentage of profit. In most cases I had this problem they gave me a refund, but sometimes I had to argue a bit.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#666

Post by britzsquad »

For my job, I travel all over Germany very often. I take the car, train, bus, or sometimes even the plane. The train is the most comfortable means of transportation in Germany. Of course, there are delays, and sometimes mistakes happen that result in very long delays. But where doesn't that happen? I find traveling by car to be the worst. How many times this year have I been stuck in traffic jams for several hours without being able to go forward or backward? No one pays me compensation for being late. With the train, I even get some of my money back if we are late. I find this blog post ridiculous. The rail system in Germany is extremely complex and tightly scheduled. We have regional, long-distance, and freight traffic on the same tracks. Of course, the train can't just stop anywhere when there's a problem. Grow up. For those who are interested: I traveled from Berlin to Konstanz for the Christmas holidays, and both trips were on time. I paid €70 per trip and didn't have to worry about traffic, icy roads, or snow. I worked on my laptop for 6 hours on both trips. It couldn't have been more relaxed.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#667

Post by rcxdude »

Telemakhos wrote: post #477
this_user wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much in German work culture - and also culture in general - is about covering your own arse. If you follow the procedure, even if the outcome is disaster, you are not at fault; you were just implementing the rules, and you cannot be held accountable. It's the fault of whoever came up with the rules, except that is usually not a single person, but some amorphous entity that ran through some decision making process…

That sounds a lot like industrial safety culture: blame the process, not the worker, so we can iterate on the safety built into the process if there is a failure, because doing so lessens the chance of future failures. It’s a great way to build airplanes.

Except a lot of the safety in any given process comes from the people: if technicians, pilots, and air traffic controllers were not empowered to assess the situation and make decisions then there would a heck of a lot more accidents.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#668

Post by britzsquad »

Etheryte wrote: post #632
3ds wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! When you spend billions on car infrastructure but hardly anything on rails, there will be issues. What people don’t write clickbaity blog posts about is how in general things work very well. I’m currently sitting on a train from Nuremberg to Berlin and it takes less than three hours, it’s on time, quiet and just a good experience. This trip used to take five hours but then the high speed rail track got compl…

Things do not work well in general. DB is internationally infamous for its garbage service because everyone who has ever taken DB has a horror story. I lived in Germany some years ago and not once did I manage to catch a train that was on time for both arrival and departure. And this doesn't even touch on the topic of being stranded in the middle of nowhere as a regular occurrence.

[flagged]

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#669

Post by hopelite »

raverbashing wrote: post #283
pjmlp wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, although quite often they forget not everyone speaks German. I once had a bit of Schadenfrunde while travelling in Netherlands, having the conductor telling us to switch trains in Dutch, and all my German fellow travellers wondering what it was all about.

I wonder what's the level of mutual ineligibility between DE NL (probably DE is easier to NL) but it's funny how Germans sometimes seem to play dumb and not understand a thing in NL

Ironically, technically speaking, there are seemingly more similarities between British English, i.e., Anglican German and current High German due to various perversions and "reforms" of the German language over the last many decades, in order to drive the Germanic people away from each other.

If the EU were a serious and legitimate institution, there would be an effort to implement reforms that nudge English, Dutch, and present day German all towards better mutual intelligibility, NOT diversion from each other through perversion and "simplification", or what seems to be a pollution and destruction of the current German and Dutch language through what at least Germans have a term for, "Verdenglichung", i.e., the portmanteau of German (De..) and English, prefixed with "ver...", meaning the transformation or application of.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#670

Post by coderatlarge »

Zealotux wrote: post #221
BloondAndDoom wrote: post #131

I feel like we lost humanity somewhere in modern world. I grew up in 3rd world country and if this were to happen, train would literally stop somewhere, anywhere. (With the assumption it’s safe from crewing into another train). But the idea that you go 55 minutes just because of policy; and skip 15 stations is crazy to me. Again with the assumptions that it can safely stop somewhere for 5m and I’m pretty sure the ans…

I worked for a massive German company you heard of, this sounds more like the typical German philosophy of strictly following the process -- as absurd as it might be -- and refusing to take initiative for anything that is not explicitly defined as one's responsibility. As a French, the culture shock was brutal and I never really got around that work attitude. I went through a similar issue back when I used to take a…

i love that meme which shows three identical paper clips in a row but one is upside down relative to the others which is a minute difference. the caption reads “chaos German style”
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