I recently made a few journeys with Deutsche Bahn, travelling on the ICE trains. To be honest I was a little disappointed, experiencing delays on every train I took, as well as broken air conditioning on one, making for a very hot and uncomfortable journey.
However in one case I had not initially reserved a seat when booking the train, but on checking the times a few days before departure I saw the train was now shown as heavily booked. So I decided to make a seat reservation on the train my ticket was specified for (they are not included automatically, at least not on the cheaper tickets but can be booked separately), in order to ensure a seat. I think this cost an extra €4.50.
However when I came to make the journey my reservation was for carriage 4. The lowest number carriage on the train was 24 (going up to 44 I think!). In addition all the seats on the train showed as having no reservations on the display.
It turns out the train I had booked (ICE603) was cancelled and another train with a different train number had been substituted at Leipzig (or possibly before), running to the same times as the train I had booked to continue south to Nuremberg and Munich.
I had a rather difficult conversation with the guard due to my limited German and his limited English the gist of which was that I could sit in any free seat and claim a refund on my reservation (which I had shown him) since the carriage and seat number specified on my ticket was not actually on the train.
OK it's not a lot of money but anyway, does anyone know how you can do that? The information I could find on the DB website suggested you have to fill in a form and post it to Frankfurt, though this mostly seemed to be compensation for delays which was not the issue in my case (none of the delays were over 1 hour).
However in one case I had not initially reserved a seat when booking the train, but on checking the times a few days before departure I saw the train was now shown as heavily booked. So I decided to make a seat reservation on the train my ticket was specified for (they are not included automatically, at least not on the cheaper tickets but can be booked separately), in order to ensure a seat. I think this cost an extra €4.50.
However when I came to make the journey my reservation was for carriage 4. The lowest number carriage on the train was 24 (going up to 44 I think!). In addition all the seats on the train showed as having no reservations on the display.
It turns out the train I had booked (ICE603) was cancelled and another train with a different train number had been substituted at Leipzig (or possibly before), running to the same times as the train I had booked to continue south to Nuremberg and Munich.
I had a rather difficult conversation with the guard due to my limited German and his limited English the gist of which was that I could sit in any free seat and claim a refund on my reservation (which I had shown him) since the carriage and seat number specified on my ticket was not actually on the train.
OK it's not a lot of money but anyway, does anyone know how you can do that? The information I could find on the DB website suggested you have to fill in a form and post it to Frankfurt, though this mostly seemed to be compensation for delays which was not the issue in my case (none of the delays were over 1 hour).