Can SouthEastern ticket offices do seat reservations on other companies trains?

[Geoff_K]

If I want to buy a BZ6 to to wherever I'm going off-peak return, with a 60+ Oyster and Senior Railcard, I know that I have to do it at my local southeastern station's ticket office. But I have a few related questions.

If I need to make a seat reservation for the non-southeastern part of the journey, can my local ticket office do this when I buy the ticket?

When buying an off-peak return do I need to specify on what date I'm returning, if there is no seat reservation required?

When buying tickets via the company itself, or the NR Journey Planner, how long can I leave it before collecting the ticket from the nominated ticket office? My thinking being that it might be easier to get a refund on an uncollected ticket, than a collected one, if the event I'm going to is cancelled or postponed.

Any thoughts, ideas etc. welcome. Thanks.

 

[roversfan2001]

If I need to make a seat reservation for the non-southeastern part of the journey, can my local ticket office do this when I buy the ticket?

Any ticket office should be able to issue a reservation for any day train (I don't think they can do sleeper reservations).

When buying an off-peak return do I need to specify on what date I'm returning, if there is no seat reservation required?

If there are both day and period returns available then it's helpful to specify whether you're returning on the same day or not, but you don't need to specify exactly what day you're returning as long as it's within a month.

When buying tickets via the company itself, or the NR Journey Planner, how long can I leave it before collecting the ticket from the nominated ticket office? My thinking being that it might be easier to get a refund on an uncollected ticket, than a collected one, if the event I'm going to is cancelled or postponed.

I don't believe there is an upper limit as to how long you have to collect tickets purchased online, the time is naturally limited by the date of validity of the ticket. You can also collect them from any ticket office or machine in the country, rather than just the station you specify on the website while booking. Note that there is a £10 admin fee on refunded tickets so it may be best to wait until closer to the time to purchase tickets.

 

[Geoff_K]

Any ticket office should be able to issue a reservation for any day train (I don't think they can do sleeper reservations).

If there are both day and period returns available then it's helpful to specify whether you're returning on the same day or not, but you don't need to specify exactly what day you're returning as long as it's within a month.


I don't believe there is an upper limit as to how long you have to collect tickets purchased online, the time is naturally limited by the date of validity of the ticket. You can also collect them from any ticket office or machine in the country, rather than just the station you specify on the website while booking. Note that there is a £10 admin fee on refunded tickets so it may be best to wait until closer to the time to purchase tickets.

Many thanks

 

[Aictos]

Any ticket office can retail tickets for the sleeper services, the only issue is if the staff actually know how to retail the required tickets.

As a example, a few years ago I wanted to purchase a rail rover with a priv from a GN station, as it turned out the staff had no idea how to retail the product and bearing in mind I have no ticket knowledge I had to show them how to retail it.

My point being that while tickets should be retailed from any ticket office within the UK for UK travel, sadly not all staff are familiar with either ticket products or their ticketing system.