Mandatory Seat Reservation

[ACBest]

Hi all,

Just a quick question - I'm going to be making a journey in a few weeks with a friend. They've already made their booking and so have reservations - but I've only just made mine.

Just wondering, if my seat is nowhere near theirs - and unless the booking system does miracles, I doubt it will be! - do I have to stick to my mandatory reservation? For obvious reasons, I'd hope not!

All advice appreciated.

Many thanks

 

[ainsworth74]

The conditions of an Advance ticket (note this is no the same thing as buying a ticket before travel) require that you should occupy your reserved seat. I, however, have never experienced myself or come across anyone who has had any problem with sitting in any available seat as long as it's the correct train.

Therefore I would say sit together even if you don't have reservations together.

 

[yorkie]

Hi all,

Just a quick question - I'm going to be making a journey in a few weeks with a friend. They've already made their booking and so have reservations ...

Then ask at a station if they can reserve you the seat next to them

Just wondering, if my seat is nowhere near theirs - and unless the booking system does miracles, I doubt it will be! - do I have to stick to my mandatory reservation?

Technically yes you do have to stick to it, but if the train isn't busy then feel free to sit anywhere.

We could probably provide better advice if we had information on the journey being made.

 

[ACBest]

Then ask at a station if they can reserve you the seat next to them

Technically yes you do have to stick to it, but if the train isn't busy then feel free to sit anywhere.

We could probably provide better advice if we had information on the journey being made.

Of course - sorry, it'll be Peterborough to Lincoln on the direct VTEC service.

 

[SaveECRewards]

Of course - sorry, it'll be Peterborough to Lincoln on the direct VTEC service.

VTEC don't seem to mind. I often change my seat for a better one. The Twitter team often suggest customers do that too.

As a courtesy if my reservation is the only one on that seat I will remove the reservation ticket from the seat back and move it to my new seat.

 

[ACBest]

VTEC don't seem to mind. I often change my seat for a better one. The Twitter team often suggest customers do that too.

As a courtesy if my reservation is the only one on that seat I will remove the reservation ticket from the seat back and move it to my new seat.

Ah, that's great stuff. Thanks

I'll likely drop them a tweet on the day too just so I can back myself up if needs be.

 

[ScotrailINV]

VTEC don't seem to mind. I often change my seat for a better one. The Twitter team often suggest customers do that too.

As a courtesy if my reservation is the only one on that seat I will remove the reservation ticket from the seat back and move it to my new seat.

I've had the same on ScotRail and the old EC, never had a problem sitting in a different seat in 100+ journeys. If the train is busy I'll often remove my seat reservation and show it to the guard to let them know. In my experience most don't seem to care as long as you're on the right train.

 

[ASharpe]

If you book on the virgin EC website you can pick your own seat for their services.

There is an option to do it just before you enter your payment details.

 

[yorkie]

There is no point tweeting them.

There will be plenty of space and no-one will mind.

But for future reference, as mentioned above, click 'view your seat' to select a seat of your choice, if booking a VTEC train on their website. This is more of an issue at busy times and on trains that go to destinations that are much more popular than Lincoln

 

[ACBest]

There is no point tweeting them.

There will be plenty of space and no-one will mind.

But for future reference, as mentioned above, click 'view your seat' to select a seat of your choice, if booking a VTEC train on their website. This is more of an issue at busy times and on trains that go to destinations that are much more popular than Lincoln

Bizarrely enough, I did that yorkie - and every seat in coaches B, C, D and most of E if I remember correctly, were shown as booked to Lincoln! I sincerely doubt it...

 

[swapmeetpete]

You have to click on the seat map to make it show what's actually available.

 

[ACBest]

You have to click on the seat map to make it show what's actually available.

I did, because I did move myself around a bit.

 

[yorkie]

Bizarrely enough, I did that yorkie - and every seat in coaches B, C, D and most of E if I remember correctly, were shown as booked to Lincoln! I sincerely doubt it...

It does not show where they are booked to.

It shows available seats, and seats which are not available (which may be unreservable or may be reserved for any part of the journey; the detail is not provided)

If you can advise of the date of travel I will take a look.

 

[AM9]

If the reservation system offered the same visibility of seats as airline websites then I wouldn't have any issue with that reservation being enforced. The problem is that (in my recent experience with FGW), the choice isn't there.
At the time of booking, the choices were: Quiet/non_quiet, Airline/table, Window/aisle. Not all combinations were offered and there wasn't any choice of left or righ side which might be important to somebody who is affected by the sun on an east-west service. I even went to St Albans station to see if the booking office had a better view of available seats, but it came up with wrong direction, wrong coach and in some cases, unreservable seats, so how is that?
Until passengers have visibility of the seat map before committing, it would be unreasonable to enforce a reservation. I suppose that on lines like the FGW WoE route the situation won't resolve itself until they get rid of the HSTs with their mish-mash of high and low density configuration coaches and converted 1st class offerings. Roll on fixed formation MUs.