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Booked advance wrong date

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Belly Buster

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I'm such a clot. I just booked an advance, and after the site crashed first time around I managed to pick the wrong date when rebooking.

Given I have only just booked this (in the last hour) - is there any leniency in getting it changed without a fee?

I booked using Virgin trains for 21st when I should have booked for 28th.

The ticket cost £16.
 
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hairyhandedfool

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Phone them and ask.

Maybe that sounds blunt, but they are the only ones who can tell you.
 

Belly Buster

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Phone them and ask.

Maybe that sounds blunt, but they are the only ones who can tell you.

Well I rang them and they changed the ticket at no charge :D

Great advice - thanks.

I am not a great fan of Virgin (mostly due to the exceptionally high fares for standard tickets) but here they have come good. I guess it is because I rang straight away after booking.
 

Solent&Wessex

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Well I rang them and they changed the ticket at no charge :D

Great advice - thanks.

I am not a great fan of Virgin (mostly due to the exceptionally high fares for standard tickets) but here they have come good. I guess it is because I rang straight away after booking.

Well done. I did that once on the East Coast website and realised my error about 30 seconds after pressing the confirm button. I phoned and emailed EC straight away and was sternly told it was my fault and they flatly refused to do anything about it unless I paid all the relevant fees &c.
 

142094

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I've done this a few times before, but just put it down to experience and bought another cheapo advance.

I did once get on a train and sat in my reserved seat, when a lady came up and asked me to move. I had a look at her ticket and she'd done the same, with the ticket booked for the same date a month later.
 

GadgetMan

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I've done this a few times before, but just put it down to experience and bought another cheapo advance.

I did once get on a train and sat in my reserved seat, when a lady came up and asked me to move. I had a look at her ticket and she'd done the same, with the ticket booked for the same date a month later.

I hope you did the decent thing and let her sit on your lap:p
 

142094

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I hope you did the decent thing and let her sit on your lap:p

Nah, she buggered off to try and find the guard and see what would happen. What made the situation worse, was that she was travelling to Aberdeen, so quite a hefty price if she needed to buy a new ticket.
 

yorkie

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I bought an Advance ticket for the wrong date due to the date defaulting back and me not checking. Fortunately it was only £3 (I normally double-check these things!) so just booked another.

Glad to hear of the good customer service. I understand the need for the admin fees, but when someone calls back so quickly realising their error, then common sense should be on the side of the customer, and it's good to hear that it happens sometimes!

As for East Coast, they are known for being strict & not showing discretion. I once booked 3 Advance tickets for 3 people in one transaction, before you could select seats. It allocated us all over the train and they wanted £30 to change the seat numbers! We just sat at an unreserved table and the guard was happy with that.
 

LexyBoy

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Be especially careful with nighttime departures/arrivals- Mrs LexyBoy and I booked tickets via telesales on the Penzance sleeper, double checking on the phone that it was the train leaving London (where our friends were boarding) on a certain date. Foolishly neglected to double check the tickets - date looked right after all - until told by the host on boarding at Reading (0040) that our berth was occupied. Yep, tickets were for the previous day. Excellent service from the host though- told to get on, no question of money changing hands, and fortunately a no-show meant we had a bed too! (when I've bought sleeper tickets in person before, the clerk has always stated clearly "it's the night of the 7th, but as it's after midnight it's the 8th on the ticket", probably well cautious about this happening!)
 

Flamingo

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As for East Coast, they are known for being strict & not showing discretion. I once booked 3 Advance tickets for 3 people in one transaction, before you could select seats. It allocated us all over the train and they wanted £30 to change the seat numbers! We just sat at an unreserved table and the guard was happy with that.

It would have to be a seriously bloody-minded guard or RPI with nothing else to do and really looking for a fight over something who would insist on people occupying their booked seats! (I'm sure the thread will now be swamped with people saying "They were once told to sit..." etc).
 

hairyhandedfool

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It would have to be a seriously bloody-minded guard or RPI with nothing else to do and really looking for a fight over something who would insist on people occupying their booked seats! (I'm sure the thread will now be swamped with people saying "They were once told to sit..." etc).

I believe the wording in the FAQs says guards can allow a passenger to occupy different seats on the booked train if there is space to do so, but at a ticket office a £10 admin fee is payable for changing seats.
 

island

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It would have to be a seriously bloody-minded guard or RPI with nothing else to do and really looking for a fight over something who would insist on people occupying their booked seats! (I'm sure the thread will now be swamped with people saying "They were once told to sit..." etc).

I think it arises occasionally with Megatrain, but that's more for the benefit of the guard checking off the booking numbers.
 

Failed Unit

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Well done. I did that once on the East Coast website and realised my error about 30 seconds after pressing the confirm button. I phoned and emailed EC straight away and was sternly told it was my fault and they flatly refused to do anything about it unless I paid all the relevant fees &c.

Good to see things change now the company is out of the private sector for the better :-/. I did the same thing under national express and was just given the don't do it again speech but they let me off. So one example of where the money grabbing private sector was better. It was the Newcastle call centre before it was closed.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
It would have to be a seriously bloody-minded guard or RPI with nothing else to do and really looking for a fight over something who would insist on people occupying their booked seats! (I'm sure the thread will now be swamped with people saying "They were once told to sit..." etc).

East coast state you must on the print at home tickets, I guess to stop you printing off two versions sitting elsewhere. They announced this at KX on my last journey, explicitly stating print at home, and not other reservations (as I was on an AP in the "wrong seat" I asked.) the gaurd said fraud prevention on print at home.
 

londonbridge

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As part of the Sunderland Supporters Association London branch,we used to do regular group bookings when travelling to and from home matches with GNER/East Coast (in the days before Grand Central). One Saturday night we were on the way back from the match when two Scottish lads in Man City colours got on at York and said we were in their seats. After checking the coach and seat numbers etc it was assumed the seats had been double booked,but they found a couple of spare seats. Conversation struck up and eventually someone asked where they were heading. Dundee! They jumped off at Doncaster but we didn't tell them there was only one train left going North that evening,and only as far as Newcastle!
 

Flamingo

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East coast state you must on the print at home tickets, I guess to stop you printing off two versions sitting elsewhere. They announced this at KX on my last journey, explicitly stating print at home, and not other reservations (as I was on an AP in the "wrong seat" I asked.) the gaurd said fraud prevention on print at home.

Fair enough, I wasn't aware of the conditions of those, we don't use them in FGW land.
 

142094

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As part of the Sunderland Supporters Association London branch,we used to do regular group bookings when travelling to and from home matches with GNER/East Coast (in the days before Grand Central). One Saturday night we were on the way back from the match when two Scottish lads in Man City colours got on at York and said we were in their seats. After checking the coach and seat numbers etc it was assumed the seats had been double booked,but they found a couple of spare seats. Conversation struck up and eventually someone asked where they were heading. Dundee! They jumped off at Doncaster but we didn't tell them there was only one train left going North that evening,and only as far as Newcastle!

People do that all the time, mainly due to not checking the platform displays properly. I've seen people getting on a direct service from York to King's Cross and assumed it stopped at Doncaster.
 

dvboy

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If the OP had booked on londonmidland.com s/he could have changed them no problem on their website, they don't charge the admin fee.
 

158801

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It would have to be a seriously bloody-minded guard or RPI with nothing else to do and really looking for a fight over something who would insist on people occupying their booked seats! (I'm sure the thread will now be swamped with people saying "They were once told to sit..." etc).

It would be nice if the trains had the space to allow this. I work three car trains that have 180 seats on board. At busy times 140-150 of these can be reserved. So you have some person who had A10A booked but sits in B23A - thereby taking up two seats.

Most people on my line don't bother where they sit (including sitting in another reserved seat) as they know that 99% of the time people just sit anywhere.
 

All Line Rover

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Virgin are known to be lenient when passengers have made innocent mistakes, or want to change their reserved seat to get one with a window. For this I am grateful.

However, they are not at all lenient when it comes to e-tickets (and m-tickets). They won't refund them, they won't change the date, they won't change the name, they won't do anything. They do this to protect themselves against fraud. Although I appreciate their position on this, they shouldn't make e-tickets the default collection option on their website (numerous people have been caught out by this and posted their anger on FB - VT refused to help). I would also strongly advise people against buying e-tickets and m-tickets. They erode your rights!
 

Flamingo

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Virgin are known to be lenient when passengers have made innocent mistakes, or want to change their reserved seat to get one with a window. For this I am grateful.

However, they are not at all lenient when it comes to e-tickets (and m-tickets). They won't refund them, they won't change the date, they won't change the name, they won't do anything. They do this to protect themselves against fraud. Although I appreciate their position on this, they shouldn't make e-tickets the default collection option on their website (numerous people have been caught out by this and posted their anger on FB - VT refused to help). I would also strongly advise people against buying e-tickets and m-tickets. They erode your rights!

One thing all the people advocating "print at home" don't think of.
 
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Be especially careful with nighttime departures/arrivals- Mrs LexyBoy and I booked tickets via telesales on the Penzance sleeper, double checking on the phone that it was the train leaving London (where our friends were boarding) on a certain date. Foolishly neglected to double check the tickets - date looked right after all - until told by the host on boarding at Reading (0040) that our berth was occupied. Yep, tickets were for the previous day. Excellent service from the host though- told to get on, no question of money changing hands, and fortunately a no-show meant we had a bed too! (when I've bought sleeper tickets in person before, the clerk has always stated clearly "it's the night of the 7th, but as it's after midnight it's the 8th on the ticket", probably well cautious about this happening!)

And this is the reason that the departure time from Padders was changed from 00.05 to 23.50. A couple of times per week people used to roll up for what they thought - with some justification - was the Wednesdaynight/Thursday morning sleeper (often + car in the days when it had a Motorail GUV or two on the rear) to be told that they had a booking for Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Oh the grief, oh the arguments, oh the explanation of the 24 hour clock. The majority of these were travel agent bookings but occasionally it was a B.R. one.
 

Failed Unit

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One thing all the people advocating "print at home" don't think of.

They do seem to cause a lot of hastle, certainly on the East Coast side you can only do print at home if you are solely on East Coast trains, need a connection forget it. But ultimately they need to scan the ticket and make sure that is ticket off somehow. It is easy to amend the things otherwise with a PDF editor!

Can see an interesting arguement if you have 2x people with the same ticket, is is impossible to tell who is geninue. (Yes I know you need other ID, but the ticket itself is easy to alter)
 
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