Hacker News Reader

Comment by fyt2024 | Hacker News Reader

fyt2024

DB is better than it's reputation. What is really amazing is German postal service. Contrary to some reports it is reliable. And they do understand how to work digital.

Compare with Belgium. For many years it ranked below moldovia in the world postal reliability report. Delivery is unreliable, many packages disappear. During COVID I wanted to buy stamps. In Germany you just print the stamps. No printer? Just use a pen and write a code on the letter. In Belgium they offered to send me stamps by postal mail. After I lost many packages and one was going back already to the US (address cant be found) I wrote a real nasty email to the Belgian minister in charge of the post office. They actually rerouted my us package back and were able to deliver it :-). The postman got a nasty talk with his both for forging my signature for packages he just put in front of the door and that goes stolen. 500 dollar loss...

View on HN

> DB is better than it's reputation.

No way. I use DB quite often, and its bad reputation is well deserved. Traveling Cologne <-> Leipzig I don't think I've ever had a train that was less than 20 minutes late, and since the beginning of the year, I've had two trains cancelled on me (with no compensation for the reserved seats) and two missed connections. Polish trains used to be a joke in comparison, but not anymore.

Just in the past 4 years things have gone from tolerably bad to really bad. Even Ukrainian trains operate better (personal experience), and they're dealing with Russians knocking out their infrastructure each day.

Seconded by someone on the opposite spectrum, who has had to deal with the fallout from people who use DB pretty rarely. Just last week a couple of them flew into the country and decided to take DB (after being forewarned of the risks) from two different cities to same destination (not a Euros 2024 hotspot destination). Both randomly canceled and missed wedding reception.

>DB is better than it's reputation.

Their self reported punctuality for long distance trains was 64% in 2023.

https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2023/en/combined-management-re...

At the same time, I had smaller problems due to late trains than due to flights. (I travel a lot for work.) Those 15-minute delays are annoying, but I agree with the upstream poster: the situation is better than it's said to be. Those 64% look awful, and the situation is merely bad, not awful.

I heard the minister is considering reducing the investment in track improvement to spend the money on autobahns, though, so maybe it'll become as bad as it currently looks.

> Those 15-minute delays are annoying

The 15 minute delays are annoying, the trains that do not arrive at all, however are travel ending. Bonus points: the DB was encouraged to cut train travel short or skip rail stations to make up for lost time because at least until recently the official statistics did not cover trains that did not arrive at all. That on top of the dozens of punctual ghost trains I seem to miss while praying for an actuall train to arrive at a train station under cunstruction that can't handle half the advertised train traffic.

> the situation is better than it's said to be

It is better in parts of Germany, there is a CCC talk from a few years ago that ends with a "free upgrade" slide, if your train had to travel through any of the listed stations you where basically guaranteed a travel delay of at least one hour.

The delays and the uncertainty that surrounds them make it very difficult to rely on DB when you have a connection to another train or a plane. With this level of reliability something is almost guaranteed to go wrong when your journey involves more than just one leg

> DB is better than it's reputation.

What's good about it exactly? They're not reliable, they're overpriced compared to any other form of transportation, you need to reserve a seat even if you pay for first class and the internet sucks. I find it hard to see anything good about them.

(not the person you replied to)

There many things DB can improve on. But I think they have a good coverage with modern and clean trains. They are often late, but I think it's also really hard to run a punctual train network with a country of this size in the middle of Europe, where you also need to consider all neighboring countries that have an effect on your planning and so on (a constraint, for example, that Japan doesn't have).

Sure, for example SBB (Swiss Federal Railways) is more punctual, but the complexity is also much lower due to the country size. Also mind that the Swiss just don't let DB trains into the country when they're late more than ~ 30 min.

Price: I think dynamic pricing is fine, but the range is crazy. If you book ahead of time, you can get from Hamburg to Zurich for like € 30 (8 hour trip). You'll pay double that to go from Hamburg to Berlin (2 hour trip) if you book like one day before departure. But I think on average the prices are not too high. Consider that you can go to every major city in the country within 8 hours for less than € 50 if you plan ahead 1-2 weeks, in a clean train with a nice board bistro.

Wifi: Yes, it sucks.

I take the ICEs often for long distance rides. My strategy: Plan with up to 60 min delay (especially important if you need to change trains) and don't schedule calls or tasks that require a good internet connection. With this two tricks and the right mindset you'll be fine!

> a good coverage with modern and clean trains

But not a single ounce of reliability to be found among them.

> but I think it's also really hard to run a punctual train network with a country of this size in the middle of Europe

If it was just the punctuallity. However they can't even notify people of delays correctly. Just to take the most obvious example to ever exist: Last year the entire state of Bavaria got snowed in, most predictions put restoration of rail travel at around a week. For the first day the DB app reported cancellations one hour in advance, the following days it used a 12 hour window to cancel trains. At no point did they bother to put a realistic "don't bother we wont even get to your station for the next 5 days" anywhere on the app. The event may have been an outlier but them failing to anounce cancellations when they become aware of an issue is systematic, worst case you wont be aware that your train wont make it anywhere is when the conductors start handing out complaint forms the moment the train leaves the station. The entire DB is a clown show without equal.

YMMV. I travel often enough between Zürich and Munich. As soon as the train crosses the border into Germany it starts to accrue delays. I'd say 80% of the times I arrive in Munich with 20+ minutes delay and 20% more than 40 minutes.

On the way back the train enters Switzerland with enough delay to fuck up Swiss timetables and so it accrues even more delays. So much so that makes an overcrowded Flixbus an alluring alternative.

So, long story short DB is absolutely terrible IMHO. The worst railway company in Western Europe by far among those I traveled with enough times to have an opinion (SNCF, Trenitalia/Italo, Renfe, DB, OBB).

> DB is better than it's reputation.

Nope. The reputation is well deserved.

> What is really amazing is German postal service. Contrary to some reports it is reliable.

Not for parcels which are handled by DHL. They have no shame in claiming delivery attempts that never happened and then make you stand in line for up to hours to retrieve your stuff because they can't be arsed to hire enough staff.

> And they do understand how to work digital.

There has been some improvement in that area but basic things like step by step tracking for the postal service isn't available (because they want you to buy their more expensive DHL products). It's absurd that if you order something from abroad you get frequent update while the package transits in bumfuck nowheristan a but then as soon as it gets to germany it's all silence and all you can do is hope it arrives within the next months.

Not that I am anyhow a fan of DHL, but thats completely unrelated and private company to Deutsche post, its failing are its onw. Or does DHL in Germany take over (some) deliveries from DP?

"DHL" is a brand of Deutsche Post...

I'm envious of you not having experienced why they absolutely deserve their reputation

Well. They run. Compare to public transport in the US. They have Internet on board. Not always, often slow, but they have it. They have bullet trains and you can use all slow trains as much as you want for 49 euros a month.

Sure, China is better, cheaper. At my time without wifi, maybe this has changed. But compared to most countries DB is pretty good. I love trains.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com