Shinkansen smartEX App Reviews: Is It Legit?

Shinkansen smartEX App
Shinkansen smartEX App
Central Japan Railway Company

Customer Experience

Positive experience16.8% of reviews
Neutral3.5% of reviews
Negative experience79.7% of reviews

~ Based on 370 written reviews from the US App Store.

Is Shinkansen smartEX App Safe?

Shinkansen smartEX App does not appear safe based on available data. AppsHunter Safety Score for Shinkansen smartEX App is 35/100.

This assessment is based on 576 user ratings, with an App Store average of 1.7/5.

Safety Analysis

16.7% of ratings point to a safe experience
1.9% of ratings suggest some concerns
81.4% of ratings point to a risky experience

~ Based on 576 App Store ratings for Shinkansen smartEX App.

Is Shinkansen smartEX App Legit?

Shinkansen smartEX App appears to be a legitimate app. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Shinkansen smartEX App is 95/100.

Based on 95 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Top reviews

Painful

This app is so painful to use, beginning with the account set up, I assume they hate tourists. The bullet trains, once you’re on them, are fast and efficient. But whether you’re buying tickets at the station or trying to online using this app, it is just incredibly painful and difficult. Just one example: they limit passwords to eight characters, but also insist that there be upper and lowercase letters and a number. It’s as if they are begging for their users to be hacked. My workaround: arrive at the station half an hour at least before the train departs, so you can navigate the confusing and inexplicable ticketing process.
Show more

Doesn’t work

Trying to access. Won’t accept the password I’m sure
I set.
Fine.
I will reset password. Stuck in never ending loop of OTPs and failures. Only option given to solve is to phone a non toll free number. Terrible design.

Garbage app

If you enjoy a miserable UX, getting booted from your session, and having multiple valid credit cards fail, you'll love this app. The developers may wish to consider actually testing the app before foisting it on unsuspecting users.

What

Doesn’t work with eSIM

Warning Card Verification Broken

It doesn’t work to validate Visa cards and booking is broken

Absolutely terrible

How can Japan’s biggest rail company produce such an appalling app? Terrible authentication process that feels like it’s from 20 years ago, and the app crashes on launch.

Horrible App

Absolutely useless app. The app or website is down for maintenance multiple times every day. You can’t reset your password because to do so you need to enter in data that it tells you is wrong. It won’t tell you what is wrong. It won’t let you correct what is wrong. It won’t let you in anyway access an account it says you already have or reset a password it says you already have. Absolutely useless.
Show more

Listen to the reviews

Waste of an app. Logs you out after two minutes of inactivity. Also you’re not able to purchase any ticket if you have a credit card from the US. Same for the website. Good luck trying to save time and get a preferred seat with those restrictions.

Doesn’t accept Visa/Mastercard

Doesn’t accept Visa/Mastercard and now I have to pay 30% more to my hotel to book on my behalf and they can’t get me the early bird discount since they can’t buy online for me, they can only buy physical ticket. TERRIBLE APP FOR FOREIGNERS

Works until you want to pay

Just used Klook to book. On this app you can search, select preferences, but as soon as you go to pay, it stops working. Don’t waste your time.

Foreigners Use Another App

App and website do not accept foreign CCs, nor Apple/Google pay. It will not tell you this is the issue, it will just say there was a system error, but research revealed this is what’s happening. Site also shuts down for booking from 11:30pm-5:30am daily without warning. The site will also end the session after about 30sec of inactivity. Zero stars if possible.
Show more

Visa 3D secure does not work

You can’t buy anything even if you wanted to

Useless

Spent two hours trying to book a ticket on Shinkansen. After a dozen of re-logins and verifications. It kicks you out quickly if you are inactive even for seconds. Finally, it rejected both Visa and AMEX, on multiple attempts.
Same story on their website. Called credit cards, they informed me that it was the vendor. What a waste of life.
Show more

So Much fun

What’s really fun is that it lets you fill everything out and get to the end before
Telling you something is wrong and making you start back from
The beginning. I’m only 5th attempt now. Fun.

Shameful

This is literally the worst UI experience I have ever encountered. Not only the app but the website. They’ve designed a system to prevent you from buying tickets. No customer support unless you call Japan. No way to get past the maze they send you through. Find another train company if possible.

Horrible app

The app completely logs out every 5 minutes of inactivity. Why? That is horrible just bloody horrible. So so frustrating to have to log in over and over again.

Useless

Worst app and website ever. I can’t believe Apple approved it. It’s a disgrace to their whole country. Also It doesn’t ask for credit card security codes so every card we tried got denied. Aside from that, it’s the worst app in history

broken

unable to reset password and log in after multiple attempts. password reset flow switches to refuse registration of new account which is an error

Declining credit card

It keeps declining CC when bank and Visa confirmed that there were no issues and they could see the transactions going through but the App not showing the purchase hence no tickets, already wasted two hours on this when I could go out and enjoy my last day of the trip .

App Works

I was sceptical using this app after reading all other reviews. Seems like developers fixed the past issues.
I was able to book shinkansen easily and this App doesn't try to scam us out of extra money like some other apps (JapanTravel by Navittime)

This app lets you see the Discounted train seats as well unlike other apps.

I would recommend doing registration online before hoping on to this app.
Show more