EastmidlandstrainsAvis 

Dreadful service from start to end. Every train I went on this week has been delayed by over 30 minutes. Very disappointed

I travel from Sheffield to London every month, staying 3 days. The journey from Sheffield is quite painless, if the train is on the far platform then you can board early and find a seat. Particularly helpful given the seat reservations rarely worked on the old rolling stock and are unavailable on the new Aurora trains. They've now stopped all seat reservations across all rolling stock.
The older trains are a little more comfortable with nice padded seats, the Auroras simply look new but there's nothing ground-breaking. The staff are always friendly despite the service.
I've had various disruptions and delays over the years and what you can guarantee is that the communication is dire. To be fair to the train staff, they seem equally out of the loop too.
The recent knock-on from the Bedford crash, completely understandable but the day I was travelling there was no notification or update. I only found out when checking early if trains were to time. That's a one-off and raises concerns given the impact on those involved.
In normal travel days the nightmare is the return from St Pancras. They may direct you into lanes to queue and they won't let you through until the previous train has departed. With the absence of seat reservations you can only imagine the chaos of people desperately pushing their way through the barriers and onto the platform.
With the Bedford disruption I was forced to head over to the East Coast where there many more options. An early start means a slower trip to Doncaster but LNER, Grand Central, and Hull Trains all heading to Kings Cross. I took the Hull Trains down, a delight, as it was modern comfortable and quiet. Coming back I grabbed a busier Grand Central train but for an hour and a half it was fine. Then a simple connection to Sheffield.
My next trip in a couple of weeks has prompted a rethink. East coast is the way to go. Seat reservations, much nicer trains, and I can get on the platform much earlier, no mad rush. Coming home it's 10 mins longer, that's catching the Cross Country direct to Sheffield from Doncaster. The future is the east coast, not EMR.

Delays, delays, delays.

My train was stopped on the london Nottingham route Leicester, due to technical issues ( a bad wind screen washer ! )
When I took a look on arrival at Leicester, there was no issues with visibility at all!
Total lack of any consideration for the customers on the train.

Train delay for over a hour due to a lorry hitting a bridge.

There were repeated announcements that all tickets would be valid on the next available service (true) and that passengers could claim back their fare via Delay Repay. The Delay Repay part turned out to be untrue.

Long waits, late home. Created a Delay Repay claim and a Delay Repay account. Waited ten working days. The response was that I had not uploaded the correct ticket. I only had one ticket to upload, and I uploaded it.

In short, a complete waste of time and energy filling in forms.

I recently took my 3 year old grandson on a train Harborough to London .
He was so excited we paid for 3 seats which wasnt cheap - we got on and there was no where to sit - the train was packed people pushing shoving - the train continued to stop for the next hour all the way to london picking up more people it was horrible - it was dangerous - never ever again
Greedy company with no respect for travellers

1 accessible toilet for M/F and disabled on a packed Nottingham to Skegness train. Seriously? You should be ashamed. What a shambolic service. You shouldn't be allowed to operate trains. Absolutely disgusting. Never again

I use the trains regularly to visit and help my elderly parents. They are an unreliable nightmare especially from Nottingham to Leicester. Pretty soon they will literally grind to a halt completely. Today I arrived and the 9.12 was cancelled, nearly in tears as I had to meet my dad at a dementia clinic. This service is just about held together by the great front line staff. It's being destroyed by greedy share holders. They make me sick.

Unreliable service, very arrogant customer service, poor communication.
Our train Sheffield to London was delayed by 2 hour, no communication given only they kept saying "we apologise" then the train terminated in Kathrine with a connect train, that took us another long journey.
Our return was horrible on a hot day when temperature was morethat 33°, there was no air-conditioning. A little girl was nearly collapsed in the boiling train.
The fare is not cheap so why are people expected to suffer or take long journey. It was as taking a cach.

I’m glad they are losing their franchise. When you have for profit on public services, you don’t get proper public service. Staff are great just the whole service is unreliable and useless.

Arrived at 10.10am for a 10.15 train and was not let through barrier as said I was too late. Train sat there for 5 mins what a ridiculous rule. Staff were also very rude and unhelpful

Used 3 times recently for trains to Derby for football at pride park. On every occasion going to the game they put on 2 carriages for games expecting in excess of 30,000 people. This of course meant standing in the aisles of a dirty, packed and hot train, all for full fare!. How can this be a safe way to travel! Chose the train as I thought it would be a better option to road congestion, how wrong I was. Next season the train will not take the strain and I'm back in my car. Shameful lack of service!

Barriers will not work with a VALID ticket, the member of staff says its because it’s in the middle. No problem anywhere else including Stoke that must be in the middle

Both outbound and return trains late. Last rain of the evening showed as cancelled at St Pancras - apparently deleted accidentally……
Bought 4 tickets in total, all requiring separate claim, instead of just uploading them all at once. Typically difficult to exercise customer rights. At least it was possible to book tickets for once.

Every time I've taken a day return train to Nottingham on a Saturday, EM Trains FAIL their customers. As on previous occasions, yesterday there were just two carriages on the train going to Nottingham. It was already nearly full when it stopped off at Grantham, and still had several more stops before Nottingham. It is NOT ok for passengers to pay a full price ticket and then have to stand in the aisles, because you can't be bothered to provide sufficient carriages. Why do you frequently supply such an inadequate service to your customers? Why don't you add more carriages - it's a frequent occurrence of more passengers than seats on a Saturday, and you've neglected to provide sufficient carriages for years now - why do you insist on failing your customers again and again?

I’m honestly disgusted and completely baffled by this experience.

My train to London was cancelled, and the replacement was so overcrowded that I had to stand for the entire hour-long journey there and back. People, including children, were crammed into the entrance.

What I cannot understand is that first class seats were sitting empty the entire time, yet we were told we had to pay extra to use them. So despite failing to provide the service we paid for, the only solution offered was to charge more? It comes across as nothing more than money-grabbing.

I’m pregnant, and the whole experience was incredibly uncomfortable and honestly shocking.

To make matters worse, this is now the second time I’ve experienced this. I also have photographic evidence showing the overcrowding, including children being forced to stand while first class seating remained empty.

If this happens again, I won’t just be leaving a bad review, I will be escalating this further and sharing this evidence more widely.

Please take this as a clear sign to start treating passengers like people, not cattle or cash cows.

Never ever had any trouble with amazing staff, think trains and infrastructure need massive upgrades as legislated.

😆😆 so bad it’s now a joke. My boy get a train from Leicester to beeston and back again. . Everyday this week an issue…. So very bad. Shameful

Not just this date :- jouneys to/ from Corby and intermediate stations to London St Pancras are often on short form trains * trains with half the number of carriages , meaning standing crushed for over an hour. This is not helped that cancellations are frequent. Delay repay does not make up for the misery. Do not use if you have the option of driving. Has worsened considerably over the years.

The one and only time I use the train and a signalling error prevents me getting to Retford on time so had to come back home. £35 out of pocket.

Yet again, during peak hours there are only 5 trains for a London service that is third rate and an astonishing rip-off. How is this organisation still running this service? Why has not another more competent organisation given the opportunity to run the service. It's interesting that we don't see any comments from the rail regulator as I've brought this issue up before. But this is what we have to put up from these monopolies. On a further point (This is for the regulator) a detailed audit should be looked at whether delay repay claims have been paid. As an example, my claim was rejected! I then objected with a few choice words and asked the complaint to be forwarded to the regulator (It never was), BUT I got a full refund on my ticket. If I had not objected I would have lost out on a significant amount of money. There will be others in this case and hence a full audit should be done. Interestingly, its not even easy to get in touch with the regulator!!!! Unbelievable - completely broken system.