Moon over DB

Moon over DB
Originally uploaded by rmayda.

The picture is well titled because the company seems to be run by a bunch of loonies.

Months ago I attempted to renew my Bahn Card by credit card over the telephone in but their office would not accept payment. This was a good time ahead of my planned departure; I pointed out that I was going away on 21 June and would not be returning to the UK until late September, which would have caused a problem in forwarding the renewed card to me as I could only give a fixed address for part of the time.

In the event I decided to travel by alternative means which avoided using Deutche Bahn, and as this in any case proved more satisfactory and less expensive, when I travel to Sweden in the future, I will not be travelling by Deutche Bahn so this has lost the company hundreds of pounds a year in revenue. Which suggests the company should get its act together so that people in the UK can renew over the telephone which would be the normal way of paying for things, and at a fixed fee which covered day to day exchange rate variations.

Weeks later I got a letter from DB say that I had not filled in their form correctly. I don't know what the information on the form was, that was missing but required, but obviously it would not have helped if it had been as the card could not have been sent to me. In any case they must have all the information correctly from the original application for the card I got last year which expires 5 September while I was away.

I thought that train companies aimed to provide a service to their "customers" but seemingly DB is the same as the UK train companies.

Although this is nothing directly to do with DB, Eurostar was unable to provide me with a return booking out June back late September and offered me single tickets for an outrageous amount so leaving aside the Bahncard problem, essentially it was Eurostar which was unable to convey me to Brussels for my onward journey over DB so in the end I went on a luxury cruise to Denmark instead which was cheaper than sitting squashed up on the nasty cramped trains used on the Eurostar and Thalys services between London and Köln. Which may be a big reason why people are preferring to fly.

I will make another attempt to renew my Bahncard when I return to Britain and am planning another visit to Germany.