Commuters complain about everything. They complain about late buses. They complain about broken escalators. They complain about construction, about the heat, and sometimes even about urine in an elevator.
But for the customer service team at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, it doesn’t matter what passengers are bemoaning. It’s their job to respond; they try to address every complaint.
“You want to make a customer feel heard, which validates them. You definitely want them to know that you understand their issue,” said Darbi Dickerson, WMATA’s director of customer service. “If you can’t solve it, at least acknowledge it.”
A team of 11 people responds to complaints on social media in real time, every day of the year except Thanksgiving and Christmas. Across platforms, including X, Facebook and Reddit, and by text, they tend to respond to hundreds of comments per week, with the goal of replying to each message within 10 to 15 minutes.
Just because waiting a few extra minutes for a bus may not matter to the customer service agent, it doesn’t mean it’s unimportant for the passenger and their day, said Shannon Moore, manager of digital customer service at WMATA. “It’s not for us to try to judge,” he said. Many of Metro’s challenges will cost millions and take years to fix, but in the meantime, the customer service team is trying to keep up with the day-to-day.
WMATA’s focus on its digital customer service operation, and a similar trend in the broader customer service industry, reflects how social media has enabled complaints to become more socially acceptable — and more common, according to Robin Kowalski, a Clemson University professor who has studied the psychology of kvetching for more than two decades.
Grumbling is the great unifier. Lots of people do it, Kowalski said, just to different degrees.
“Complaining is cathartic because it releases that pent-up tension that develops from frustration, and it makes us feel better,” she said.
This week alone, customer service agents have responded to posts on X about buses that didn’t show up or were late, someone who forgot their shoes in a train car, discarded food in a Metro station, a broken escalator, a broken screen at a bus stop, broken air conditioning, problems with a Metro car door, and underwear left in another train car. The complaints echo those that once filled the blog Unsuck DC Metro, run for a decade by a man who closely documented delays and other rail issues.
There is plenty to work with. On Sunday, someone wrote that they had been waiting for over 25 minutes for a bus that kept saying it was 13 minutes away. “Your next bus eta is not working unless you like playing cruel hoaxes on your customers,” they wrote. “I would have taken another route had you told the truth.” A customer service agent apologized.
There are two main types of complaints: expressive and instrumental. Expressive complaints are intended to get something off the individual’s chest, according to Kowalski, while instrumental ones are aimed at bringing about a specific outcome.
Customer service agents can’t make a bus or train come faster, for instance, but they can acknowledge the passenger’s grievance, and that can be sufficient, Kowalski said. On social media, people tend to stop fussing once a Metro customer agent replies. The agent’s response — and the recognition of the problem — is sometimes all they were really looking for.
“It gives validation, and people feel heard,” Kowalski said. “Everyone wants to feel like they matter.”
José Romero often posts about issues with the Metro system — like a train missing a station and the usability of Metro’s trip planner site — on his popular social media account. Romero said he posts because he knows the customer service team will respond.
Hey @wmata please bring back the old simple and easy to use Next Arrivals page- especially for mobile devices. this new one is AWFUL. Difficult to navigate and designed by someone who obviously doesn’t ride metro daily. It’s one of the worst designs I have ever seen.
— @DCHomos (@DCHomos) May 19, 2026
“If they didn’t respond, I probably wouldn’t tweet at them,” he said. “It makes you feel seen and it gives you hope and assurance that it’s working the way that it’s supposed to work and that your money is going to fix those issues.”
Dickerson said the team deals with some chronic Metro bellyachers. “We have our frequent fliers, as we call them,” she said. “We just listen and just keep on going.”
In the third quarter of fiscal year 2026, customer satisfaction was 91 percent for rail and 78 percent for bus, according to a WMATA report. For the same period of fiscal year 2022, satisfaction was 68 percent for rail and 64 percent for bus.
Online, there’s praise for Metro, but gripes outnumber compliments. Being steeped in squawking all day can be challenging, according to Moore, but the team tries to avoid taking the complaints personally.
“Not trying to inject that into yourself is one thing that we try to preach to our team,” Moore said.
But when applause does come, Dickerson said it feels especially meaningful. “A lot of people don’t ever praise us online,” she said. So it’s always very rewarding when they do, she said.
What makes for a good grouse? Dickerson said the most common mistake customers make is not including details about the route they’re on and the number of the bus or train car.
“Sometimes customers think that we can see it, like we’re on it with them,” Dickerson said. But without that information, there’s not much the team can do to help.
Sometimes, Moore said his team learns about incidents, like assaults, through social media posts. The team monitors all Metro mentions and conducts broader searches to make sure they don’t miss anything, he said.
In July, Metro’s Red Line experienced significant delays after a pipe broke and water flooded a train control room, prompting a deluge of complaints. In those situations, Moore said they just try to take one post at a time.
Red Line complaints are relatively common, particularly this summer due to construction that has shut down three stations on the system’s oldest Metro line from July until early September.
“Wow, another awful red line experience today!” one customer wrote on Monday, saying it took 35 minutes to get from Bethesda to Friendship Heights. “Thanks @wmata! Thought you guys would’ve been able to figure this mess out by now.”
Romero said he points out issues because he wants to help improve the system.
“I do complain sometimes, but I’d like to think that my tone comes across more jokingly,” he said. “The complaints tend to get more interaction than all the countless positive things that I’ve said about WMATA.”
On Thursday morning, Romero posted about a hot train car, complete with a GIF of a sweaty James McAvoy in the action movie “Wanted.” Romero included the train car number; a customer service agent responded in 10 minutes, apologized and promised to look into it.
“Thank you for bringing this to our attention,” they wrote.
One evening earlier this month, Romero asked a more existential question: “Is the metro working? Lol planning my commute home.” That post didn’t get a reply.
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