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Arbitrary seat reservations without going to a ticket office?

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akm

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It's a common refrain in this forum that a reservation for any specific journey leg can be obtained (or should in theory be obtainable) at any ticket office. But what (if any) are the non-ticket office options for this same task? Any websites / apps? If it's not possible, why not?
 
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Mcr Warrior

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If the service is reservable, yes, but what's to prevent someone making multiple seat reservations online on different services using the same ticket? :s
 

akm

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What stops someone doing the same (at multiple ticket offices) right now?
 

AlterEgo

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It's a common refrain in this forum that a reservation for any specific journey leg can be obtained (or should in theory be obtainable) at any ticket office. But what (if any) are the non-ticket office options for this same task? Any websites / apps? If it's not possible, why not?
Seat reservations are usually available by calling the TOC or contacting them on social media. Passenger assistance bookings over the phone can also reserve seats.
 

Hadders

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Seat reservations for LNER services (only) can be obtained on their website or app.
 

Qwerty133

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What stops someone doing the same (at multiple ticket offices) right now?
The amount of effort required for one. The vast majority of those who would consider going through a relatively easy online form for a few different trains would not bother to go to multiple different ticket offices. I also imagine a bored teenager (or other person) could quite easily design a bot to overload an online system to systematically reserve all available seats on multiple trains in not that much time.
 

akm

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What is the only-available-to-TOC-ticket-offices interface or system that prevents an arbitrary retailer offering this service?
 

alistairlees

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You’d need your system to be accredited by rsp. But you’d earn nothing for doing standalone reservations.
 

alistairlees

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Which I would expect is exactly the reason. Remember several Third Part Retailers aren't taking part in the Book with Confidence scheme.
More accurately, no independent retailer is being funded to do so by the taxpayer. But every TOC retailer is. But that’s fair, eh?
 

AlterEgo

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More accurately, no independent retailer is being funded to do so by the taxpayer. But every TOC retailer is. But that’s fair, eh?
Given that we effectively have a nationalised railway, is this an argument to simply remove the unfairness by banning third party retailers?
 

alistairlees

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Given that we effectively have a nationalised railway, is this an argument to simply remove the unfairness by banning third party retailers?
Given that we effectively have bugger all revenue, is it sensible to decrease marketing and distribution by removing some retailers, as a way of solving the lack of revenue?
 

Hadders

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Given that we effectively have a nationalised railway, is this an argument to simply remove the unfairness by banning third party retailers?
We should acknowledge that third party retailers, e.g. Trainline that have driven innovation on the way tickets are marketed and sold. Without this sort of innovation we'd probably still be booking tickets through telesales....
 

Haywain

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We should acknowledge that third party retailers, e.g. Trainline that have driven innovation on the way tickets are marketed and sold. Without this sort of innovation we'd probably still be booking tickets through telesales....
Is that Trainline who started out as an offshoot of a train operator and later merged with QJump, also started by a train operating group, before being sold off to become a third party retailer?
 
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