Northern Reviews 

Carriage clean. Staff friendly and helpful.trains on time .I would enjoy the experience.

Like most train services, they are utterly incompetent. Just for an example I boarded the 16:51 train to Leyland from Preston on Monday 9th march, everything stated that the train was on time, however upon boarding the train I noticed that it didn't move after it's designed start time, no communication at all until 5 minutes later where the announcer informed us that there was a stranded train. This is just one example out of many, I get the train everyday for work and through 2 years I have never had a single week where all of the trains were on time. I'm either the unluckiest train rider in history or the staff throughout the train services are completely incompetent, if I made such mistakes at my job this frequently I'd be sacked, at least then I wouldn't have the displeasure of dealing with these trains.

A train line between bramley & menston would enhance my star rating. Not satisfied at the moment

I do not understand how your staff are demanding pay rises when they can’t even make a train move. One job…get train from A to B and even this is too difficult. To top it all off you don’t even inform customers why their train is delayed (probably don’t want to say ‘incompetent’ as the reason.)

Horrible service I literally can't call to file my complaint because the mail box is full and no one answers

Train was cancelled at Lime Street. I approached the gate barriers and waited patiently for assistance. Although Northern staff member standing right in front of me, I must have been invisible to them. Didn't offer help. Many other passengers walked up to them or called over, where their questions were dealt with, while ignoring me, waiting patiently nearby.

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Someone seriously needs to look at the level of service at Finchley Central station. What happened to me today was a mix of disorganization, lack of responsibility, and a complete waste of passengers’ time. I went to top up my Oyster card and the machine swallowed at least £5 of my coins. Because I was in a hurry, I then had to spend almost 30 minutes looking for the station staff member — who was apparently on duty but had left the station area to go outside for a cigarette. When he finally came back, he said the machine showed £2.70. I told him it was fine because I was in a hurry. But when I tried again to top up my card, the same machine swallowed my coins again. This time he told me — with an annoyed tone — that the machine was “out of service.” The obvious question is: if the machine is out of service, why is it not switched off? Why is there no sign on it? Why is there no clear notice for passengers? He told me to use the machine next to it. When I did, that machine also took another £2 of my coins. When I informed him, he replied — almost surprised — “That machine doesn’t

'Easy' delay repay service designed to be as cumbersome and difficult to navigate as humanly possible just to cheat people without a lot of time and executive function out of refunds that they're entitled to.

Everyone else in the world is capable of just giving refunds back to the card you paid with and not making up upload card details again. And make a different account just for getting a refund. And re enter all your personal information. and then go through and select and individually enter all the information about the booking (if you are on the app and you're looking for past tickets your past journeys are right there and they could easily have had them come up and let you select one! but no) as well as uploading a picture of the ticket and typing out in full the ticket number and etc etc etc. i was literally sobbing with frustration trying to do this as I have no time and no money and this feels like it was set up to exploit me

They are getting worse say day by day terrible service always delayed or canceled they take rhe piss

Useless. Trains consistently delayed or cancelled.
Dread making plans to go anywhere by train because of the inevitable cancellation / delay.
They really need to sort themselves out and get a grip.

Sigh... Another day, another attempt at cramming 4 carriages worth of peak time commuters onto 2 carriages.

I was travelling on the 08:07 service from Ulverston to Manchester Airport when my suitcase was removed from the luggage rack while I was seated four rows away. No clear announcement was heard by either me or the passenger seated next to me. I only discovered the removal at Bolton.

What followed was more concerning than the initial mistake.

Despite explaining that I was travelling to the airport for a long-haul international flight, I was offered no meaningful assistance in resolving the situation. I was directed to contact another operator regarding lost property and left to disembark, travel back to Lancaster, retrieve the bag myself, and then return to Manchester Airport — ultimately arriving 79 minutes later than planned and narrowly making my flight.

A passenger heading to the airport was left to absorb the consequences of an error without any apparent attempt at coordinated recovery.

Ironically, staff from other operators (TransPennine Express and Avanti), who bore no responsibility for the original issue, were proactive and solution-focused when I later engaged with them. That demonstrated that a better response was entirely possible.

Northern’s formal responses have relied heavily on process and protocol. While procedures may have been technically followed, the overall handling fell short of what any reasonable passenger would expect — particularly on an airport-bound service where luggage is commonplace.

Mistakes happen. What defines a company is how it recovers from them. In this case, recovery was left to the customer.

I hope Northern reflects on whether this is truly the level of service it wishes to stand behind.

DAY TWO of after the millions of pounds spent on the huge rail upgrade and the trail is cancelled. Lol

Unfortunately for me, I have no other choice to get into Manchester than with the Northern train, so I have years of experience dealing with Northern and the ONLY upside to their monopoly here is that you will always travel for very very cheap or free since EVERY train is late and cancellations 'due to fault with the signalling system' happen ALL THE TIME.
It genuinely seems like the government should step in here, public transport affects all industries and it can't be good for the public nor the economy for people to constantly be late or no-shows because Northern either refuses to or are incapable of running a single train on time.
On the flip side, if you ever want a job where you can sit around and do nothing and still get paid, I guess Northern is a good place for it.

Got train from Harrogate to York, train was on time, very clean, staff were lovely, great experience with Northern, cant praise them enough, 10/10

I mean do you think people have time to just wait around all day or something? Delay after delay after delay, get a grip of your service and do better, ridiculous.

Took mum to Sunderland yesterday 11 o'clock train from Hartlepool I just want to say a big thank you to all staff who give my mum that bit of happiness they looked after her 100 per cent being in a wheel chair is hard sometimes but the staff made it a pleasure to travel and on the return journey thank you again Mr shears from Hartlepool

Abysmal ticket procedure

This is what it feels like when a Penalty Fare Notice is forced upon you in error - you appeal the PFN and are apparently 'successful' and yet they still rob you of the price of a single fare, even though you showed them proof of a full return ticket. No way to appeal this final decision - no refund after complaining to Northern Railways (in fact no response to the points made in complaint) and pushed into taking it to the Rail Ombudsman. This company seems to operate like something akin to a Manchester mafia and I think some of the other reviews are probably right that they should be investigated and shut down. They seem to have a system set up to grab customers money at any opportunity whilst giving the poorest excuse of a service in return - they use the oldest, least reliable rolling stock you are likely to see outside a so-called 'third world' country, charge customers for tickets for services that constantly fail to function (cancellations and delays an everyday occurence) - putting customers in the position of having to try to find the time and will to attempt to get refunds - services which rarely have enough carriages and are regularly (dangerously) overcrowded - they make absolutely zero attempt at maintaining any 'customer relations', give insulting robotic responses to all complaints and rely on most customers not having the stamina to take things as far as the Rail Ombudsman in order to get away with it most of the time. Unfortunately, in my case, taking it to the Rail Ombudsman is seeming like another exercise in futility - with contradictory information received on the same day leaving me unsure whether they had actually taken my case on or not and an email the following day telling me that the case was now closed (so even if it had been accepted it looks like it didn't get anywhere) and no response to my queries since then - they did pass me on to something called Transport Focus but they say straight up that they don't have any real powers to do anything, so it looks like - after all this - a situation where Northern Rail can just get away with robbing and abusing someone and nobody can do anything about it.

They murder pigeons. Boycott