Southeastern Railway Omdömen 700

Absolute joke of a company. Genuinely makes my life so much worse than it already is. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Every day there is something, every day I am delayed by 30 minutes or more. But of course they refuse to refund despite not providing the service I pay for.

This review is directed solely to the security staff at Victoria Station.( It will probably go unnoticed as I note that no responses to any reviews have been given but, here goes anyway.) My wife and I visited the station for a quick snack at midday on Saturday 21st July 2026. We were seated at a table outside a cafe in the corner and had just started eating our croissants and drinking our tea and cappuccinos. We were approached by a beggar and he proceeded to spin a yarn about his military escapades in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else he could think of. I stopped him in his tracks and he walked away to make a nuisance of himself to others at an adjacent food establishment, whilst all the time furtively looking around for a police or security presence. After ten minutes or so he returned and came out with the same spiel to other customers sitting near us. When we left to catch a bus I approached two of the security staff and reported him to them and they immediately began to go to where we had last seen him. Another member of staff instructed another one to go with them. As we were leaving the station we saw the beggar accosting more people in the entrance arch so I went back and located security and they came out with me. I said that "they obviously knew him" , which they did. I would like to thank them for getting on it very quickly and enthusiastically and hope they, or their managers do actually see this review.

The staff are incredibly rude, non sympathetic and won’t allow you to board an earlier train despite it costing the same amount! Constant stares and aggressive if you don’t accept what they say. Avoid London Victoria station!

Running any company is hard but running one where nothing is joined up is impossible. The ticket desk staff are separate to the gate staff, to the platform staff. This means no one has any answer for customer queries. The plastic keycard is run by another supplier. It rarely works, of course no one can help me. They all routinely tell me “it’s not my problem”. Well south eastern it’s not my problem either. I’m the customer you’re meant to help me not blame me, shout at me, shrug your shoulders at me or tell me there’s nothing you can do. As a customer I’m not only subject to poor service, eye watering high prices but outright rudeness. There’s no one to complain to or find help from, in person or online they just say “not my problem” this is unacceptable. Tonbridge station gate and ticket office staff are consistently the most problematic and self congratulatory with their unwillingness to help. Who can help sort this out its clearly not south eastern?

I have the misfortune to have to use Southeastern's Sittingbourne to Canterbury East service for my daily commute. Without any exaggeration, this is absolutely the most awful and worst train company I have ever had to deal with. I'm writing this review this morning 13/03/26 because yet again trains have been cancelled. The cancellations are very frequent, trains are often delayed if they turn up at all, you struggle to get a seat due to over-crowding, the trains are dirty and the facilities don't work. For this lousy and terrible service, I have to pay over £200 per month. The service is so bad I'm thinking about quitting my job because the journey is just not viable. In addition, the Delay Repay option is extremely difficult and frustrating to use. I can't help wondering whether this is deliberate to deter claims for compensation. It is absolutely dreadful to use and you struggle to make a claim which I have to do constantly. A terrible, lousy and utterly appalling service for which I would give 0 stars if that were an option.

Trains cancelled due to a trespassers,southeastern can't help that...how ever the train that got redirected left and then decided to update info meaning it went totally other way. Then tbe next few trains cancelled. Meaning we need an uber, so unless we go to station, we cant even get a refund. Outside this example, constantly late or cancelled n so expensive. Anyone person relative to the orchestration of regulating these services, should 100% seek other employment in a non critical environment

Commuter trains are now actually coming early and sometimes leaving before schedule ! I usually get the 07.49 service to the Medway towns from the Canterbury area and the service is now arriving at 07.45 nearly every day. If you try to catch at train “ on time” you’ll miss it. I see so many getting people now caught out with this- just so that the company can say they are on time. On the way back, the same thing happens. No working toilets on long 12 carriages! This is not serving the public. Waiting rooms are consistently locked! What IS the point of having them there with some refurbished if they are locked - and in winter? Yet everyday they have about a thousand staff check you’ve paid at the station; SouthEastern clearly have oodles of cash for that. It’s extremely expensive and barely any facilities. The toilets on the platforms are usually clean however.

4th March 2026 London to Strood off peak pre booked cost £7.25 (return half) Had to travel earlier. Instead of 19.20 had to go 14.20 still off-peak with pensioner railcard. Cost to change £10.20. Re-Nationalise these bloodsuckers now.

There are no trains On multiple occasions Southeast London. In an area that already doesn't have tubes. I understand people need trains during the week to go to work. But people have weekends off and want to enjoy these days and you decide to have engineer work on the weekends. Always.
And then you increase the ticket fare. How is this a good service?
No tubes no trains and today (1/3/26) no buses either.

A 3 rd class ride by GUA -TATANAGAR Memu...1.40 hr distance and it takes 6 hour after delaying by 3 hour

Shame..

I purchased a Railcard through the Southeastern app and did not use it at all. On the same day of purchase, I realized it would not be useful for me and attempted to cancel it. However, there was no clear or accessible option in the app to do so.

Unfortunately, I did not manage to complete the cancellation at that time. Today, 23 days after the purchase, I tried again to cancel it through the website and was informed that there is a strict 14-day cancellation period.

This is a digital card that has never been used. I do not understand why it cannot be cancelled and refunded in these circumstances. The process to cancel was not straightforward, and the lack of clarity in the app contributed to this situation.

I am disappointed with the customer experience and the inflexibility shown in handling an unused digital product

Worst train company ever. Delay repay was refused because they didn’t even know if my train was delayed? Haha

Keep your money guys your day is coming mark my words.

Update: after I replied that I would escalate the issue, they approved a whopping £1.80 refund on a £41.80 return fare. Now I can afford half a box of chips from the takeaway as the threat of being fired for being late to work looms ever closer.

Update: these absolute rats flagged this review as ungenuine so I’m going to keep posting updates in response so everyone sees it. Hopefully your contract isn’t renewed so you people who brown-nose shareholders and prioritise profit over customers are out of a job and are smoking crack to get over losing your wives to the personal trainer. Reprobates.

My son has just turned 18 but is still at school. He had a 16-17 Railcard, which meant his monthly season ticket cost around 57 pounds. The railcard no longer applies so we bought a 16 to 25 railcard for 80 pounds for three years, only to discover that the railcard does not apply to season tickets and does not apply to travel before 10 am making it useless for school students. His season ticket now costs 127 pounds a month which we can really not afford so how does he get to school. I think this is discriminatory because of age and should be illegal

Absolute shambles of a company - can't run trains on time to save their lives and their customer service is the worst in the UK, utterly unhelpful and don't know what they are talking about half the time. Money grabbing idiots but then it's run by the government - shouldn't really be surprised! Should be shut down!

Rubbish. Trains are either late or cancelled. On the good exception they are on time they arrive 5 minutes early and leave before their scheduled departure time which causes us to miss the train even though we are following their timetable. Trains run through the station hourly which make it worse. If there was something else I’d use it instead of this company.

Don’t hope to get anywhere at a reasonable time the second there is the slightest bit of rain

They will also offer you alternative train tickets that have longer travel times and are more expensive than your initial tickets as if that’s supposed to make it better (:

I was in a state after having had a terrible day. My Victoria train was cancelled and I had to go to Cannon Street. The man at the ticket barrier for platforms 4/5/6/7 at 18:50 was so kind to me when I cried. Sometimes there are angels out there.

Well, I am surprised that so many people have had such an awful experience. I appreciate im not a daily train user, but because I havent been on trains I this country for many years, I cannot believe the improvement
in rolling stock and in station staff. The treatment I have had from Special assistance staff both at Maidstone East and at Victoria, has been nothing short of WONDERFUL. So there!!

If there is a zero option on stars it would be 0. But there isn't, so one has to choose 1. Southeastern is the worst from any other I used in UK. There are trains with no toilets, WHO THOUGHT TO BUY LONG TRAINS WITH NO TOILETS? IF you get off at a station where there is SUPPOSEDLY a toilet, it is always "out of order". YES SUPPOSEDLY, BECAUSE THERE ARE NO TOILETS ON MANY TRAIN STATIONS.The toilets on a train if you happen to get on one with a toilet, none of those on the train is open, if there is one open, there would be no toilet paper, no water, no soap. And that is not once or twice, it is a system for southeastern administrators who only collect bonuses without thinking of providing services.We live in a dump from 16th century. But there is a CCTV! Wow- CCTV in the primitive hygiene conditions of16c
Horrendous, horrendous, horrendous!!!

A really unhelpful barrier guard. Due to an accident, I was later than expected to get my train. As I was short on time, I quickly bought my ticket online as I know there are usually queues at the kiosks. I mistakenly didn't select the ticket option, as it was raining and I was walking in a rush to get to the station from a car park.
When I got to the barrier, I realised this. This has happened to me before, and the barrier guard would check my ticket details and let me through. This time she didn't.
The tickets are very expensive, and the service is very poor and inconsistent. I would expect a degree of leniency from this company.