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Chiltern and seat reservations

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trainophile

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Can anyone make head or tail of this?:

https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/13-it-possible-reserve-seat

“We do not offer seat reservations on our trains.

When booking tickets for other train companies, if seat reservations are available, you will be given the option to choose any preferences you may have, such as table, power points and direction of travel. These preferences can be saved in your booking profile.

Only when the booking is placed will confirmation be made that your seat reservation has been successful.

On some routes especially over bank holidays it is compulsory to reserve a seat and you cannot join the train without a reservation.”
 
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alistairlees

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I don't understand your question. Seats are not reservable on Chiltern Railways services. They are reservable on the services of many other train operators though. That's it.
 

hwl

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I don't understand your question. Seats are not reservable on Chiltern Railways services. They are reservable on the services of many other train operators though. That's it.
And you can use the Chiltern website to buy tickets on other operators services hence the need to explain reservations.
 

Randomer

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Isn't this essentially the case for any TOC who doesn't offer reservations but is compelled to sell the full range of fares online.

On some routes especially over bank holidays it is compulsory to reserve a seat and you cannot join the train without a reservation.”

The part I find issue with is this. Since when has this been the case. You might be well advised to reserve a seat but I thought only the 2 Sleeper services were compulsory reservation?
 

ForTheLoveOf

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The part I find issue with is this. Since when has this been the case. You might be well advised to reserve a seat but I thought only the 2 Sleeper services were compulsory reservation?
Certain extremely busy services, particularly over bank holidays, will be made reservation-compulsory. Of course, if someone buys a ticket before this is done, or they buy a ticket without having been given the requisite information to know that the service is reservation-compulsory, then they may be able to claim delay compensation if they are denied boarding and are sufficiently delayed as a result.
 

trainophile

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I was booking Birmingham Moor Street to Warwick earlier on the TPE website, and it had “you can reserve a seat”, followed by the usual tick boxes for direction, seat type etc. I made my choices only to be informed on the next page that no seats were available to reserve, would I like to try a different journey?

Hence my confusion! Usually unreservable trains don’t even make the offer.
 

cactustwirly

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I was booking Birmingham Moor Street to Warwick earlier on the TPE website, and it had “you can reserve a seat”, followed by the usual tick boxes for direction, seat type etc. I made my choices only to be informed on the next page that no seats were available to reserve, would I like to try a different journey?

Hence my confusion! Usually unreservable trains don’t even make the offer.

Chiltern trains are reservable for the purposes of selling advance tickets, but no specific seat is reserved, instead a 'counted place' seat reservation is issued instead.

Tbh the 68 sets have seat numbers, so I don't see why they don't actually reserve specific seats on these services
 

alistairlees

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I was booking Birmingham Moor Street to Warwick earlier on the TPE website, and it had “you can reserve a seat”, followed by the usual tick boxes for direction, seat type etc. I made my choices only to be informed on the next page that no seats were available to reserve, would I like to try a different journey?

Hence my confusion! Usually unreservable trains don’t even make the offer.
This is probably the result of the only reservable seat being the disabled seat. It comes back as "available" when you do a search for availability, but is not actually bookable (for an online journey planner), so will fail at that stage. This is a known NRS issue, which will only be fixed when NRS is replaced. In the meantime it will cause minor confusion, but no real damage, as in this thread.
 

Jonny

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Certain extremely busy services, particularly over bank holidays, will be made reservation-compulsory. Of course, if someone buys a ticket before this is done, or they buy a ticket without having been given the requisite information to know that the service is reservation-compulsory, then they may be able to claim delay compensation if they are denied boarding and are sufficiently delayed as a result.

How many services (apart from the sleepers) are made compulsory reservation? Which ones?
 

CyrusWuff

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How many services (apart from the sleepers) are made compulsory reservation? Which ones?
It's been a while, but there have certainly been occasions post-privatisation where boarding controls have been in place at Kings Cross, Euston and Paddington, generally around Easter and Christmas.
 
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