Do Avanti do counted places?

[Bletchleyite]

I've just bought a walk up ticket for an Avanti service in 2 hours' time (not left Euston yet). Normally a seat reservation would be issued if it wasn't showing "sold out", but one hasn't been.

Are Avanti now "overselling" in a controlled manner with counted places? Good if so. Or is there a problem with reservations generally at the moment?

Unfortunately as it's an e-ticket bought from the Trainline app I can't see whether a counted place was issued or not, but the train is marked as reservations compulsory (fake) on Realtime Trains.

Edit: something odd is going on, if I try to do the same journey on Trainsplit I get the following message, which normally only appears on trains where reservations are not offered at all - normally for counted places you get a different message along the lines of "you have been reserved a place on this train, please take any available seat".

Milton Keynes Central > Manchester Piccadilly

The train operating company does not offer a seat reservation for this ticket on this leg of the journey.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

This has been expanded more recently on the back of criticism that non-London/"shorter" journeys were showing as unavailable completely.

Transport Focus got involved and wrote an article.

It discriminates by ticket type though - Advance tickets should still get an assigned seat.

 

[Bletchleyite]

This has been expanded more recently on the back of criticism that non-London/"shorter" journeys were showing as unavailable completely.

So they're now holding back reservations for passengers from Euston and denying them to those at MKC making a similarly long trip? Good lord, if they could get any worse...

(I agree with doing counted places from Cov to New St and similar though, at least unless they got rid of the fake compulsory reservations entirely)

Edit: no, doing the same from Euston. I guess it's controlled overselling? Better than the train being half empty because it's "sold out" I suppose...

It discriminates by ticket type though - Advance tickets should still get an assigned seat.

No Advances are left on that train (1753 from Euston). However that's a ridiculous policy. I pay more, potentially a lot more if buying an Anytime Single, and I don't get a reservation?

It really is a mess.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

So they're now holding back reservations for passengers from Euston and denying them to those at MKC making a similarly long trip? Good lord, if they could get any worse...

(I agree with doing counted places from Cov to New St and similar though, at least unless they got rid of the fake compulsory reservations entirely)

The revenue/demand from MK-Manchester is absolutely fractional compared to London-Manchester, I'm not surprised they prioritise the more lucrative passengers. There's also a safety aspect with London Euston and the need to provide some assurance over a seat to prevent even more of a riot.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The revenue/demand from MK-Manchester is absolutely fractional compared to London-Manchester, I'm not surprised they prioritise the more lucrative passengers.

This is I guess why the question needs to be asked of what the railway is for! To be fair in this instance there aren't any reservations available from Euston either, it looks like they've made available a quantity of counted places over and above the actual reserved seats which is probably sensible. That is if they are counted places - the message displayed is the wrong one for if you got one of those - it's like they've taken the reservations compulsory flag off without taking it off!

 

[Adam Williams]

Edit: something odd is going on, if I try to do the same journey on Trainsplit I get the following message, which normally only appears on trains where reservations are not offered at all - normally for counted places you get a different message along the lines of "you have been reserved a place on this train, please take any available seat".

I wouldn't read too much into this, the message is just a bit useless. It is dishing out a counted place in the background which is associated with the basket, as an example:



There was a brief recently from Smarter Information Smarter Journeys that basically said counted places are confusing to customers and customers are coming to the conclusion they have an assigned seat when they don't actually have one. There are a set of recommendations around making it clearer when an actual assigned seat has been allocated, and giving much less prominence to "no place" or counted place reservations.

Do not use the terms "Coach*Seat***" or "Coach[space], Seat[space]" to indicate where a customer has no Assigned Seat for a particular Journey Leg in, or in any location accessible from, the Review Pane / Page

In the Review stage, make it clear to customers if they do / do not have an Assigned Seat for each leg of their booking. This can include changes to templates including:
> Removing confusing language around places and 'seat reservation: any unreserved seat' etc.
> Removing confusing color-coding such as green when no reservation has been made.

It's likely you'll see UI changes as this continues to roll out and customer-facing pages make less of a big deal about counted places.

 

[paul1609]

This is I guess why the question needs to be asked of what the railway is for! To be fair in this instance there aren't any reservations available from Euston either, it looks like they've made available a quantity of counted places over and above the actual reserved seats which is probably sensible. That is if they are counted places - the message displayed is the wrong one for if you got one of those - it's like they've taken the reservations compulsory flag off without taking it off!

It's a preliminary to extending the LNER trial to the WCML.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's a preliminary to extending the LNER trial to the WCML.

Thought LNER didn't do counted places.

 

[paul1609]

Thought LNER didn't do counted places.

Nor will Avanti when the off peak and return tickets are abolished.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Thought LNER didn't do counted places.

They certainly do.