Trustpilot - Best & Worst TOC Reviews

[Envoy]

I have just been looking at Train Company reviews on Trustpilot. Good to see Transport for Wales scoring very highly for consumer satisfaction - and the fact that they have staff responding to the reviews.

It looks to me like Cross Country rank lowest for consumer satisfaction based on the reviews from the public - and the company fail to respond to the comments from the public.

 

[AlterEgo]

Trustpilot is a good receptacle for low grade complaints. The site is really just a pay-to-play scam for businesses.

I don't know why TfW are wasting their time on there. Even they have a very poor score by Trustpilot standards.

 

[Carlisle]

It’ll all change soon anyway with just GBR & the devolved governments being the major UK rail operators.

 

[Adam Williams]

The site is really just a pay-to-play scam for businesses.

You don't have to pay anything; Raileasy doesn't.

I've found it can be a useful way to get an idea of pain points when it comes to the product, customer support processes (and rail industry policy in general!).

Of course, you'll always get a tiny number of truly unreasonable people who whine for no good reason/threaten to sue/are abusive etc.

 

[riceuten]

It's a bit like Tripadvisor reviews for hotels - you need to sort the wheat from the chaff, and the people who complain about the lack of a chocolate on the pillow and rose petals on the sheets of hotel bed, versus consistent complaints at a location about noise, room cleaning and breakfast.

For TOCs, I would be most interested to read about how they tackle complaints. The rest is just noise

 

[Akela]

It’ll all change soon anyway with just GBR & the devolved governments being the major UK rail operators.

It’s going to take a very long time for most of the fundamental issues people complain about with various TOCs (mostly overcrowding, short-formed trains, delays and tired rolling stock) to be resolved, regardless of who manages the services. Those are infrastructure issues rather than administrative ones.

 

[Russel]

It’ll all change soon anyway with just GBR & the devolved governments being the major UK rail operators.

I admire your optimism, given most of the issues facing the likes of XC are a direct result of the DFT and Civil Servant bean counting, I fail to see what will change, other than the colour of the trains.

I'll take this Trust Pilot nonsense with a pinch of salt.

 

[JamieL]

It looks to me like Cross Country rank lowest for consumer satisfaction based on the reviews from the public - and the company fail to respond to the comments from the public.

That is probably an accurate reflection of railway experience though. The Cross Country Voyagers are too short meaning they are often overcrowded and have toilets that absolutely stink and make the passageway (which you may end up standing in) horrific. I (most likely) caught COVID-19 from a travelling on a packed Bristol to Birmingham CC as well. Travelling by train is my preferred method of travel but if Cross Country are involved, I'll drive!

 

[Horizon22]

Crosscountry has been coming dead last in most RDG-managed surveys too of recent times - and anecdotally probably is the worst reviewed here - so this isn’t much of a surprise.

 

[warthogsoveruk]

Crosscountry has been coming dead last in most RDG-managed surveys too of recent times - and anecdotally probably is the worst reviewed here - so this isn’t much of a surprise.

I remember when I first saw a Voyager. I thought 'That looks pretty flash'. Then 'Hang on, where's the rest of it?'.

 

[apinnard]

For consumers it creates a false sense of certainty. For businesses it can become less about genuine service improvement and more about optics, damage control and gaming the algorithm.

I own a service business and refuse to be involved with any of those sorts of sites. Businesses who pay enough can easily skew their results.

Anyway, it’s mostly full of whinging scrotes who have a bee in their bonnet.

 

[Russel]

That is probably an accurate reflection of railway experience though. The Cross Country Voyagers are too short meaning they are often overcrowded and have toilets that absolutely stink and make the passageway (which you may end up standing in) horrific. I (most likely) caught COVID-19 from a travelling on a packed Bristol to Birmingham CC as well. Travelling by train is my preferred method of travel but if Cross Country are involved, I'll drive!

Gentle reminder that there are Voyagers in storage in Derby that could go a long way to addressing the issues you're highlighting that the DFT won't allow CrossCountry to lease...

I'm not saying CrossCountry are without fault, but let's remember that many of their issues are a result of decisions made by the government department responsible for transportation.

 

[riceuten]

That is probably an accurate reflection of railway experience though. The Cross Country Voyagers are too short meaning they are often overcrowded and have toilets that absolutely stink and make the passageway (which you may end up standing in) horrific. I (most likely) caught COVID-19 from a travelling on a packed Bristol to Birmingham CC as well. Travelling by train is my preferred method of travel but if Cross Country are involved, I'll drive!

I believe the toilets issue dates from when they were ordered by Virgin and the latter were too tight to order the correct machinery to empty the waste tanks, and it's not been substantively addressed since then.

 

[saismee]

Gentle reminder that there are Voyagers in storage in Derby that could go a long way to addressing the issues you're highlighting that the DFT won't allow CrossCountry to lease...

As if they'd allow passengers on the rear unit! Maybe they should've converted some to 8/9 cars units.

 

[ExRes]

Sorry but anyone who believes anything they see on Trustpilot needs a reality check

 

[Russel]

Sorry but anyone who believes anything they see on Trustpilot needs a reality check

Same for online reviews in general to be fair.

 

[Envoy]

You may well get a lot of moaners on review sites but it is possible to get a general consensus of opinion. For example, we all seem to agree that Cross Country is probably the worst train operator in Britain and I am sure that many people would be annoyed if they knew that at the request of the Government, some Voyagers are in storage.

Go on Google and find your local GP practice and see what people are saying about it and whether or not, based on experience, you consider the reviews fair. Do, the same for anything else that has reviews such as garages, hotels, railway stations - or any thing that you are familiar with and see if the comments are fair or not.

 

[styles]

I tend to prefer the passenger satisfaction reports from Passenger Focus.

Review websites like TrustPilot are barely worth the paper they're written on these days. I worked for a company who contacted customers immediately after their service and asked for a rating. If their rating was 8, 9, or 10 out of 10 and we had no negative sentiments in our notes about the appointment, then and only then would we send them a TrustPilot 'verified customer' link. So all the negative reviews went into the ether, and even if they decided to go out of their way to review us on TrustPilot, it wouldn't show as a "Verified" review. The whole thing's a scam.

It's similar on Amazon, except Amazon are both the retail platform and the review platform, so they can verify purchases themselves. Except to get around that you have retailers who will send out cheap products for free (think like a £1 plastic phone case), pay them 10p to review it, this shows up as a verified purchase review, then the retailer will go on to sell more expensive things under the same product listing and the reviews carry over.

It's all a nonsense really.

 

[johntea]

The problem with reviews in general is if you have a positive experience with something you're far less likely to bother writing a review than a negative experience so they never provide a balanced platform

 

[saismee]

The problem with reviews in general is if you have a positive experience with something you're far less likely to bother writing a review than a negative experience so they never provide a balanced platform

The only TOC review I've bothered to write was praise for the amazing person working the GN Twitter page as they managed to help me get home an hour early (actually an hour less late) by arranging another route on my ticket.

 

[DarloRich]

I don't need Trustpilot or Tripadvisor to tell me Cross Country are awful.................

 

[riceuten]

Sorry but anyone who believes anything they see on Trustpilot needs a reality check

I do - as stated above - look for common, ordinary themes on Trustpilot. There was an overseas bank account I was considering (Blackcatcard), and the numerous reviews on Trustpilot alleged fraudulent use of details, money becoming "trapped" and interminable delays in withdrawals and verification. Nowhere else at the time had this kind of detail.

As for TOCs, I would certainly not be looking for service quality information freely available elsewhere, but there are no customer service metrics publicly available - Trustpilot is a proxy for that.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 Jun 2026 ==

The problem with reviews in general is if you have a positive experience with something you're far less likely to bother writing a review than a negative experience so they never provide a balanced platform

I think if you take that into consideration - as many people do - then there is at least a equality of expectation

 

[D1537]

The problem with reviews in general is if you have a positive experience with something you're far less likely to bother writing a review than a negative experience so they never provide a balanced platform

Not quite - people who have an excellent experience (i.e. well in excess of what they were expecting) also tend to write reviews. The ones that don't are those whose experience is just "that was fine", or indeed, the ones whose experience was mildly sub-par but not enough to make them rush off to their keyboards.

So you tend to see reviews skewed with far more "5 stars - excellent" and "1 star - rubbish" comments with many fewer 2/3/4 star reviews which probably represent most people's experiences.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Sorry but anyone who believes anything they see on Trustpilot needs a reality check

It's the same as TripAdvisor, etc: good at identifying general themes but don't get too bogged down in the minutiae. Disregard the 1-star reviews because there was too much cake/not enough cake and disregard the one-word 5-star reviews and you'll get the gist of a company or hotel or whatever.

We see this here. The general gist is that TfW are generally quite a good operator and that XC are generally an awful operator. I'd say that tallies with what we all say on here.

I don't trust any company which proudly announces its TrustPilot rating in its advertising, though. They may as well just admit that they're gaming it.

 

[styles]

Not quite - people who have an excellent experience (i.e. well in excess of what they were expecting) also tend to write reviews. The ones that don't are those whose experience is just "that was fine", or indeed, the ones whose experience was mildly sub-par but not enough to make them rush off to their keyboards.

I'm often in this camp. I'm happy to bump up reviews for great service, but I really can't be arsed writing reviews for say 4 out of 5 star service.