Southeastern Railway Reviews 

Penalty at London Bridge because I bought my ticket on the train, before I boarded and I didn’t HOLD it for the entire journey? £115. Come on, get your act together South Eastern and focus on your service not penalising your long suffering customers. What a bunch of muppets.

I recently purchased a senior rail card from Blackheath station because I had been shopping there at the time. The experience at the ticket office was so positive, on that occasion, that I decided to go back to Blackheath station today, even though I live over four miles from there, to enquire about the best ticket deal for a return journey to Bath Spa station (leaving on April28th and returning the following day). The customer service I received today, from the member of staff Victoria, was equally as positive. She was extremely thorough (looking at all possible options) and with such a friendly and personable manner.
Well done at Blackheath station for a customer service that in my experience is second to none.

No shame delays after delays and not a single apology by the driver. Learn something from Japan.

I was on the 12:32 from Margaret to St Pancras today and the conductor that came around was incredibly helpful and polite. He was able to help me with my issue and was very understanding 10/10!

The ticket situation seems crazy. I had a hospital appointment in London and had no idea what time it would finish so conservatively booked my return ticket for 14.20. As things turned out my appointment didn’t take long so I went for the earlier 12.50 train but staff at St Pancras refused to let me travel. I’m 65 and disabled, for goodness sake. Would it have hurt for them to let me on the earlier train? It’s not as if it was peak time. The PA was broadcasting the fact that there were plenty of seats. Just bonkers.

Dear Southeastern Customer Services,
I am writing to report a recurring issue with my Southeastern Key smartcard.
Every time I purchase or load a ticket onto my Key card, it fails to work when I try to use it at ticket gates or validators. Although the payment is successful, the card does not allow me to travel, which causes delays and inconvenience on every journey.
This issue has happened repeatedly, and it appears there may be a fault either with the card itself or with how tickets are being loaded onto it.

what a load of incompetence
my train back home was cancelled because of a breakdown, what, they don,t have a standby train????
rather unhelpful staff said i would have to wait an hour for the next train!
PATHETIC SERVICE

When I left my bag at Ramsgate station, the staff (Nathan) helped us and called different people at the station to see if they could help us. Then they said to come to Charing Cross to get the bag amd now we got it. Thank you, Nathan! (By my son)

Frequently use this service and never get 100% from the company, for some greed reason they charge double during peak times with chances of standing for 30+ mins travel.

Delays and signal faults are very common, not something us customers who uses the transport for work wants to experience over and over again.

With the double charge of peak surely the company can fix the repeating issues, guess we shall never know in our live time because it is never ending

Station staff just consistently rude and indifferent, St Pancras anyway, try to board an earlier train another £16.50! Just extortionate and extremely rude. They’d do well to remember the tax payers are paying their wages. I should point out staff at Margate are usually very courteous.

Been using them for 6 months now.
-HS1 is great, but it costs 23% of an annual minimum wage
-Weekend works happen every weekend. That's when they don't close the line in both ways for a week and a half. I paid a whole year of HS1, but ride a series of buses and then some very uncomfortable Thameslink that hurts my back. The whole reason I pay for HS1 is to avoid the back-breaking seats of Thameslink, I have a lower back issue and these "seats" (more like wooden benches) took me to physio in less than a month of using them
-As great as HS1 may be, it's just as dirty as the rest. Actually, thameslink may be cleaner, the floor can be mopped, while HS1 has carpet flooring.
-Most HS1 trains will not display the direction they're headed and the stations along the way unless they arrive or depart in and from a station. The 15 minutes in between they just display the carriage number. If you don't pay attention to the screens for those 20 seconds when this information is displayed, you may end up 35 miles away. I kept looking and looking at the screens..nothing. Just a big C, for the carriage letter. Or maybe it was an indication of what big C's they are for not displaying such basic information, as if it would cost them anything to do so.
- I can't wait for it to be nationalised. You cannot possibly ask for 7 grand and for 2/7 days in the week send a bus..then a minibus...then another train that is not even remotely as fast or comfortable as the thing I am paying for. Actually...you can. You are doing it. Well done for swindling your customers!

I take Southeastern High Speed at least twice a week back and forth from London to Deal and it is absolutely the worst! There is ALWAYS something wrong either the train is delayed, and I mean DELAYED by a lot, or in the middle of the journey we have to get off at a station because of a problem and the train won’t go any further adding more frustration, or completely cancelled with excuses that are laughable like a member of staff not available???!!!!! which is utterly ridiculous for not trying to accommodate the passengers who are paying so much money to travel on this line and there is NEVER enough information just an apology, which after a while means nothing at all when plans are cancelled or appointments missed or complete disruption to customers’ lives. It’s pathetic and unacceptable for a supposedly high speed train to have so many problems! My date of experience is not just today but at least two out of three times I travelled for the last month, it has had all kinds of problems. I’ve just had enough.

The worst trainline I have ever used. Unfortunately this is the only one which operates in my home area, because I would never choose to use them. Trains constantly delayed and announcements of these both in the stations and on the app are always wrong. They delay, then again and again and again and often the train then never turns up. The bus replacement services are also terrible, but Stagecoach needs their own review of how bad they are.

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