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East coast booking engine, strange problem.

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Failed Unit

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I needed 2x Edinburgh - Newark tickets on the 27th May with senior railcards. But this into East Coast nothing came up. All APs gone? Maybe so I tried again with just one, along came ticket about £31.80. Good I thought and took it, then just did the same again and got offered on about £38.00 which I took. By luck the seats were allocated next to each other (as the website wouldn't let me move them)

Got what I want, but anyone any idea why it happen. I doubt it was because the were different prices as normally you get offered 2x the highest priced ticket. I didn't try other sites such as Scotrail as I wanted the discount.

The service was the 1800 but when attempting to book two in the same transaction no services came up for that day. The cynic in me is that east coast don't want 1st full of AP holders. (but suspect it is a bug) just don't understand why it is only on that date, I did also look for Monday 28th with no issues.

Will also write to East Coast (who will claim the cant replicate it screen shots will be included)
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Just tried on Scotrail as well. 1st class advanced fares only show if you book for one person not 2. Very strange. The above was 1st class sorry not clear, no problems with standard showing up.
 
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yorkie

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This has cropped up before. If it won't let you move the seats, then that generally means that is the last available seat at that price. This is presumably because the way it moves seats is to first allocate a new seat, then release the old one. It cannot do that if there are no available seats.

It's possible there are other people trying to book that train at the same time too!
 
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Failed Unit

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Yorkie - true on the seat moving front. But still find the fact that if you try and book 2x AP first class tickets on Sun 27th May it returns no quota, but you can book 2 if you do it in separate transaction. This applies for all trains that day.
 

John @ home

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East Coast are now showing me no First Advance tickets at all for the 1800 Edinburgh - Newark on Sunday 27 May, although First Advance tickets are available at the lowest tier for Edinburgh - Alnmouth and at the next tier for Alnmouth - Newark on that train.

Wierd!
 

Failed Unit

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East Coast are now showing me no First Advance tickets at all for the 1800 Edinburgh - Newark on Sunday 27 May, although First Advance tickets are available at the lowest tier for Edinburgh - Alnmouth and at the next tier for Alnmouth - Newark on that train.

Wierd!

Maybe I snaffled the last 2 - ;) but it is odd that the same thing is happening on train line powered engines.
 

csilke

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12 Jul 2008
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I needed 2x Edinburgh - Newark tickets on the 27th May with senior railcards. But this into East Coast nothing came up. All APs gone? Maybe so I tried again with just one, along came ticket about £31.80. Good I thought and took it, then just did the same again and got offered on about £38.00 which I took. By luck the seats were allocated next to each other (as the website wouldn't let me move them)

Got what I want, but anyone any idea why it happen. I doubt it was because the were different prices as normally you get offered 2x the highest priced ticket. I didn't try other sites such as Scotrail as I wanted the discount.
A quick experiment reveals that there is exactly one first class advance ticket available at 51.30 then 62.50, 77.50 and finally 117.00 on the 16:00 train (all fares without any discount).

You might think that if you asked for 2 tickets you would be offered the 51.30 and the 62.50 tickets because they are 'sold in limited numbers and so subject to availability' (http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/advance_conditions.html) and those are the cheapest tickets available. But no it seems you are only offered tickets when there are enough available at the same price - which in this case means the Anytime Single. This appears to be common practice across all the websites I checked (EastCoast, Chiltern, NationalRail, Trainline, CrossCountry, MyTrainTicket & Raileasy).
 
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