West Midlands Railway Avis 

I would 0 stars if I could!! They left it until Saturday 30 August to release this school years autumn season ticket for a term which began in Monday 1 September. They say that tickets take 2-5 working days to process on their website plus the time for posting once processed is clearly far from sufficient time!!
Not only did we have to pay for a pass that arrived 7 working days after our daughter’s term started but we had to pay for daily tickets for her to get to school. Now we are waiting for a refund for which we are in a queue for!!! Presumably with the rest of the Midlands school children who couldn’t get a season ticket in time, due to the ridiculously late release of the autumn term season ticket.
The tickets issued doesn’t work at the barriers either!!
I have also applied twice for a student ID card 2 weeks apart and neither of them have arrived yet so my 14 year old daughter is constantly being subjected to the Spanish Inquisition each time she travels. Get a grip West Midlands Railway and do better please.

I made a complaint on 14th august, submitting relevant photo evidence at the time. A week later I was emailed asking to provide the same information that I already had done. I replied to that sending the information again and since then I haven't heard a word responding to my complaint. Clearly they don't care at all about their customers

Tried to get home to berkswell from bham new st on 13/8/25. Rush hour local services both cancelled. No info on boards at new st or announcements. Had granddaughter with us so got an Avanti to international and a taxi home. Cost us £16. Totally useless service always cancelling trains. Sooner in public ownership the better.

Zero tolerance on genuine ticket mistakes, zero ability to run a train on time too. Oh the money grabbing irony.

Absolutely the most unreliable train network in the uk. I take the same trains 5 times a week in the morning and evening for 3 years now and only this year that train WASN’T LATE OR CANCELLED ONLY 5 times. It is absolutely disgusting and unacceptable to ask people pay for tickets when you cannot follow a basic schedule that you have created. It’s a shame! Disappointing! What’s the point of new trains if all the toilets are always locked or out of order. What’s the point of paying for services that you are almost never providing with a pride or on time when I have to be late to work literally every day. Wasn’t scheduled made to follow? Maybe it’s time to finally look into re staffing and not attend to your work like you couldn’t be bothered to come out of bed. Idiotic!

I get the cross city line train to Birmingham every day, and every day without fail the train is either delayed or cancelled. I have spent SO much money on Ubers when they cancel the trains for the entire evening for a “signalling failure” it is honestly such a terrible service. I can’t think of a week where they haven’t been trains cancelled for the entire evening. It’s like they sit in an office and spin a wheel to decide why the next train should get cancelled. And the refund system is insane! You end up having to go through customer support if you have an open return and have scanned your ticket on the way in, as this makes you “ineligible for a refund” then they try and charge an admin fee, so you end up getting 2 quid back from a 10 quid ticket for a service that isn’t even running! I honestly could spend the rest of my life complaining about the trains in the UK. They seem to run so well everywhere else, yet get cancelled when it’s “too hot” here.

Absolutely unreliable. I used this service between stevhford and new street to go to work and back however i had issues most of the time. Occasionally left a minute earlier, many times was late and staff were were always unprofessional and on one occasion on new street even rude and sexist. The main issue tgat ic im late from work im loosing money - as paid by hour. If trains would be on time i should be there 15 mins begore my shift starts, but often i am still 15-20 mins late. Also, in my workplace the policy is that ic i’m late i loose service chare too. Therefore i loose an avarage £20 / week due unriable train service - or more because i spend on uber. I have tried to be eco but with this 19 century quality of train service is just not possible.

I thought I was getting a train from Bham snow hill to Solihull, but in reality I needed to get off at Bham more st to them get on another train. Which I didn't read in the rush. How annoying!! That I ended up at Shirley through the confusion. Can you make it more broader please?? Or highlighted??

Absolute jokers I book my tickets online without any human interaction.

Total cost £5.90 I have to cancel my trips I get refunded 90p as there's a £5 refund cost.

What cost? It's all flipping automated you thieves.

I know it's only a fiver but it's the principle of it

I'll never use this service again

Whilst taking a West Midlands Railway service from London to Birmingham New Street our train was stopped making us late to arrive at Birmingham New Street. When we arrived, we found our connecting train to Liverpool Lime Street that we should have missed still hadn't left yet and there was a large group of a couple of hundred Liverpool FC supporters going to their title parade.

We all stood together waiting at barriers for over 1.5 hours as no one was allowed through, no trains went by, no announcements were made saying that the train was cancelled or delayed until 1.5 hours later when a member of staff at the station told a number of people the trains were cancelled and we should find alternative routes.

I went through the delay repay process which instantly rejected my claim, so I appealed and after waiting 15 days for a response, I was finally informed that:

'... We have checked your journey and on this occasion, we could not find a delay of 15 minutes or more.'

Shocking and infuriating communication on the day has somehow been surpassed by appalling communications afterwards. Taking 15 days to find that you didn't have a delay of over 15 minutes simply means you didn't contact anyone at the station, didn't look at camera's and simply don't know your services or lines. My pictures of being the queue and the subsequent time stamps tell the story though they don't seem to be able to accept that.

If only Trustpilot allowed you to submitted less than 1 star.

Can’t thank Joe enough for the help with my refunds
He works in customer relations, he is a credit to the company
Thank you Joe :)

Hard to say what went right

A 2 hour journey took 7 hours yet here’s my response after a very delayed reply, oh and don’t bother trying to get refunded they refuse with no explanation 👍 well.

Thank you for your e-mail regarding the issues you had when attempting to travel with us. I apologise for any inconvenience and frustration caused, as well as the impact this had on your travel plans.

It's unfortunate to hear about the difficulties you had travelling that day. While I do appreciate the problems you experienced as a result, we do not reimburse for lost wages I'm afraid. I'm sorry we are unable to grant your request.

With regards to the delay itself, you can make a claim for compensation via the delay repay page on our website. I have attached a link below to the page on our website where you can submit your claim:

Delay Repay | LNR | London Northwestern Railway

I hope that helps. Thank you for taking the time to contact us

Following an app update at the start of the year which prevents flexi-season ticket holders from viewing previously activated tickets, and blocks screen captures. WMR have deliberately made it impossible for Flexi-season ticket holders to make delay repay claims. Given the appalling quality of service this is a frequent necessity.

I have made multiple complaints about this which have resulted in no resolution to the problem and have included: being told to send the ticket barcode to delay repay (precisely the thing that is being blocked); referring me to an email address that doesn't exist and bounces all messages; and referring me to a team that cannot process delay repay claims.

This matter has been referred to the rail ombudsman.
(date listed is that of my initial complaint)

Giving one star because you can’t give less than zero

It’s hard to rate a service which never operates. Most services are cancelled for the never ending “train crew shortages”

The company seems to only employ social media staff who post endless nonsense without actually providing any useful information.

If they recruited and trained as many people to run trains, we might actually have a service which operates to the benefit of the West Midlands.

Want to say a big thank you to the guard on the 22:11 Birmingham- wolvohamption train who really helped me out tonight

I booked a train ticket for one 2hrs later as did not know when my national express coach was due in.

As it came I early I wanted to get home early and not wait 2hrs for my train. Cross country trains refused me on with the pre booked ticet but the Wmt aloud me to travel . Big thank you for helping me and that beautiful smile made my day I was cold and only had shorts and a t shirt on so your kindness to aloow me to travel was greatly appreciated I never bought her name but thought to come on here and leave a review as that one act of kindness now has make my evening 💯❤️

I’d rather walk than use this excuse for a business!
Garbage timetable, late trains and now trying to push their WOKE ideology down everyone’s throats!
Let’s hope they are Nationalised and out on the dole where they belong!

Could NOT get on board.
Train operator closed door exactly 16:45.
I was there 16:45 and 8seconds and he stood on the platform and refused to let me and 3 other people in - there was room in the train- he just said to take later train.
I had short time between trains and couldn't get to Walsall on time because this train operator refused to let waiting people in.

I would give zero stars if the option were available.

This company is complete rubbish. Had 4 carriages and barely any seats. You can’t reserve seats in advance so there is a risk you will be stood up all the way from Birmingham to Euston as I was.

If I had know my ticket was for such a garbage train, I would have driven instead.

Our evening train from London to Northampton almost made it to Northampton but then there was a problem on the track involving emergency services, so we were reversed back to Milton Keynes and advised by the driver to 'get help from staff on the platform or take a taxi home if we were going to Northampton' as there were no other options, and a replacement bus would not be provided so late in the evening.

There were no staff on the platform (no surprise) and we joined the scrum for a taxi, eventually finding one at midnight.

What happened couldn't have been anticipated (the incident) and we didn't mind taking a taxi, as a refund was promised.

But 2 months later we are still waiting for the refund (£50), and this is really frustrating. If you email you don't get a response. If you call they can't help - all they can do is 'tell your case handler that you called'.

My sense is now that you're really very much 'on your own' when you travel with these guys, and need to be able to fund an alternative if the need arises. 2 months is too long to wait for what was a very straightforward scenario with receipts etc provided via the advertised channels.

Wish I could score worse. Got delayed by over two hours and then even gaslit by the company for "lack of evidence" claiming money back despite providing them with all evidence asked for. Then my account being deleted so I couldn't go further with it, despite being able to provide further evidence. If there's another option, take it. If something goes wrong with these guys, they won't help you out or even give you common decency