LNER (and others) Christmas bookings

Over the last 20 years or so tickets have become available in October for Christmas travel.

This year, the LNER website throws up a box saying tickets are not yet available for travel on selected dates (in this case, 24 and 27 December Edinburgh-London).

My resourceful sister then went to the trainline (I know, I know...) who promptly sold her a 5.5 hour journey on the west coast to Euston - £39 advance with a seat so not bad - and a £73.70 super off-peak single coming back from King's Cross for the 27th.

Needless to say the return journey is (a) overly expensive and (b) there's no seat reservation .

What does the regular punter with little knowledge of the UK's ticketing system do in this case?

I don't think there is much they can do, except either take a different route, buy more expensive flexible tickets or wait for the advances to be released. Advance tickets are ultimately a discount product, not a regulated entitlement.

From other threads I get the impression is that the root cause of this is network rail being slow to confirm details of engineering works and LNER not wanting to sell tickets for trains that may turn out not to exist.

Try again tomorrow

amarshe said:

Over the last 20 years or so tickets have become available in October for Christmas travel.

This year, the LNER website throws up a box saying tickets are not yet available for travel on selected dates (in this case, 24 and 27 December Edinburgh-London).

My resourceful sister then went to the trainline (I know, I know...) who promptly sold her a 5.5 hour journey on the west coast to Euston - £39 advance with a seat so not bad - and a £73.70 super off-peak single coming back from King's Cross for the 27th.

Needless to say the return journey is (a) overly expensive and (b) there's no seat reservation .

What does the regular punter with little knowledge of the UK's ticketing system do in this case?

Click to expand...

They read the relevant section of the LNER website

https://www.lner.co.uk/travel-information/travelling-later/tickets-for-future-dates/

amarshe said:

Needless to say the return journey is (a) overly expensive and (b) there's no seat reservation .

Click to expand...

All they need to do is reserve a seat presumably? Call or message trainline on Twitter and ask if they can add one for her.

Of course, the price of the journey back might be more than £10 less than the price paid for the flexible ticket. If she is unhappy about that, I suggest making a complaint, or refunding the ticket, buying a new one, and taking the £10 hit.