Great North Eastern Railway > Reviews > GNER comprehensive

Author's product rating:   

Frequency of trains	Excellent
Reliability of trains	Mostly on time
Comfort of trains	Comfortable
On-board facilities	Poor

Advantages:	They do get there  -  eventually
Disadvantages:	Terrible customer relations, don't trust them to book your seat, look after you when things go wrong, be at all sympathetic

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

After reading a few of the other reviews of GNER I thought I'd treat you to some of my adventures on this rail service. I think to give a true opinion of a rail service, since they can have bad days when one train stops in a particular place at a particular time and the whole system goes wrong. This is why connex services urge you to get to the train on time as a few seconds delay can have a 'domino' effect.

I'm a student used to travelling the GNER line from home near Newcastle to London, so I can't comment on their services as far as Glasgow Central I think I can give a general overview. I also spent last summer in Dungeness a power station in Kent and had to travel there and back every week for two months - and I had real fun!

It's a sunday, I'm going back to work which means travel on the afternoon sunderland to newcastle, change, newcastle to london, get tube kings cross to victoria and train out to folkestone, I allow myself an hour extra because a friend has to pick me up from the station at the other end and I don't want him waiting.

While I'm changing trains in Newcastle my purse, cards, tickets, railcard is stolen, everything! I get on the train and as it pulls out I realise what has happened. I'm only 19 and travelling alone you can understand I was shocked and worried. I told the guard who said he'd let me travel to London at which point my mother could pay for a ticket over the phone to get me out to Folkestone so I'd be safe as usual. I therefore stay on the train and they let me relax in 1st class, all very nice.

Get to KX, the boss of the GNER ticket office says I have to pay the full fee from Sunderland to Folkestone return, to replace my original ticket. This costs £100, as I mentioned I'm a student with a disabled mother and she's just been told of this over the phone, please bear in mind £100 is a lot to her. So I'm left in KX wondering whether she's got the money in her account to pay for it, it's a sunday so if she hasn't the ticket office bloke says there's nothing he can do.

GNER would have left me stranded in Kings cross station with no money, nothing. After saying he couldn't contact Newcastle Lost Property to see if any of my belongings had turned up he then sent me on a wild goose chase round the staion to try and find lost property so they could give me Newcastles number. The horror story goes on. In the meantime, luckily my mother comes up with the money - I'm saved, but by this point I'm left crying my eyes out with a long journey to Folkestone still to go - not a good start to a working week.

And yes, I've also suffered 7 hour journeys when they should have been 3 - and not even a complimentary coffee. Try standard plus, - Its a whole different ball game. I also booked a journey to take my little bro' down to London and back and they booked his seat but not mine meaning I could have been at the other end of the train to him!

Don't expect anything more than about a tenner back if you complain, unless your dad's a journalist like mine and threatens to contact the national press - you could always pretend! Last time I heard they had a six week backlog of complaints at customer services central in york and that was before hatfield.

On board toilet facilities are terrible, and the service is generally overpriced.

If you do get on a good day the service can be reasonable but don't bank on it.

They've offered me a free return ticket anywhere, but I'll think twice about taking it.