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Double booked seats on LNER

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HSP 2

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On Sat 14/3/20 three of us one 12 year old and one old man who is bad on his legs and myself were booked on the 14;26 from Newcastle to York to find a lady asking for some people to move from a set of seats, I looked at the seat numbers and we had them booked! I just asked if she was in the correct coach and she showed me her eticket right train right coach and date (I did also show her my tickets). The guard came down to check the tickets I pointed out what had happened he looked at the tickets and scanned them nothing wrong. He just said it looks like our cock up.

On Monday I looked on the LNER web site and found delay repay and double booked seats. So I filled a claim in on line but I also spoke to a chap on the phone.

In the post this morning I got four travel vouchers for the full cost of the tickets, so well done LNER.
 
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Haywain

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The so called double booking happens a fair bit, usually because someone has made a post booking seat change and forgotten about it. This results in them trying to occupy the seat shown on their ticket rather than the one to which they changed.
 

35B

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I wonder whether that’s entirely true. I travelled last weekend, and found my seat reservation from Scarborough to York wasn’t on the train. Given the changes to fleets at present, I wonder whether the IT systems are fully coping.
 

mikeg

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Agreed. I worked at a cinema and double bookings could happen if someone online and the box office booked nearly simultaneously. Guy from it called it a 'race condition', with two parts of the software completing things in an unpredictable order. Perhaps this happened here?
 

Wallsendmag

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In my vast experience of investigating these issues Haywain's explanation is spot on. I have never found a seat double booked, fleet changeover doesn't come into the equation.
 

robbeech

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It's been known (on another operator) for a (example) 0930 service to become an 0910 service due to engineering works and an 0947 become an 0930 at the same time. This causes issue for those people who had booked seats on the original 0930 as people who booked the 0930 (ex 0947) are also able to book the seats because that is the new 0930. I'm not suggesting this is what happened here, but it has been known and is an example of where it does appear to be a double booking. Even in this case it's not really a double booking, just a timetable alteration farce. Of course, most of the time it wouldn't match a time.
 

alistairlees

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It's been known (on another operator) for a (example) 0930 service to become an 0910 service due to engineering works and an 0947 become an 0930 at the same time. This causes issue for those people who had booked seats on the original 0930 as people who booked the 0930 (ex 0947) are also able to book the seats because that is the new 0930. I'm not suggesting this is what happened here, but it has been known and is an example of where it does appear to be a double booking. Even in this case it's not really a double booking, just a timetable alteration farce. Of course, most of the time it wouldn't match a time.
It’s the retail service ID, not the time, that’s used in NRS. Changing the time in itself shouldn’t matter.
 

robbeech

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It’s the retail service ID, not the time, that’s used in NRS. Changing the time in itself shouldn’t matter.
Yes, but when they change the time, and then change the time of another to be the same as the old time, essentially they're on the wrong train, but to look at their ticket, they're on the 0930 in seat A12 for example. It's happened with a long distance operator, they refused compensation when they had to sit in standard instead of first because, well nobody knows why, i assume because they knew they'd get away with it. Harsh? perhaps.
 

alistairlees

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Yes, but when they change the time, and then change the time of another to be the same as the old time, essentially they're on the wrong train, but to look at their ticket, they're on the 0930 in seat A12 for example. It's happened with a long distance operator, they refused compensation when they had to sit in standard instead of first because, well nobody knows why, i assume because they knew they'd get away with it. Harsh? perhaps.
Yes but that’s not an error in NRS. It’s an issue with customer communication.
 

robbeech

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Indeed,
Even in this case it's not really a double booking, just a timetable alteration farce.
Which confirms that there are several scenarios where seats can appear double booked on the face of it, but in reality an ACTUAL double booking is almost impossible.
 

robbeech

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Which is why we need to show train numbers (they already exist, they're the RSIDs), not times!
Agreed, although in the situation pointed out by myself, and the one with regard to changing a seat booking as @Haywain mentions this wouldn't make any difference. I guess on top of that, if it really were a double booking that somehow got made, there isn't much you can do about it when you're on the train anyway.
 

HSP 2

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About the only thing that I forgot to mention in my original post was that I booked with LNER and the lady booked with Trainline.

I was praising LNER on a very fast turnaround on the compensation claim as much as anything.
 
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HSP 2

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In that case we would have been able to tell in seconds.

If your meaning abut the tickets the guard / conductor did scan both the paper tickets (mine) and the ladies Etickets, and said it looks our (LNER) cock up. I don't know what the machine was but it looked to take photos / scans of the tickets.
 

HSP 2

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IMG_1531 (2).JPG

Photos of my tickets with the guards / conductor stamp on them, showing 11.03. 1 something. It could be his number of he has not changed the date
 

HSP 2

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As far as I can remember if I did change the seats, it would have had to be before I booked my seats and bought my tickets.
If this could help you to see what has happened, this is the transaction ref, 20smkfbj7z.
I booked the tickets on the 05/03/2020 @11;20 or that is when I got conformation of the booking and payment.
 

HSP 2

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Question?
As I had paper tickets how would I be able to change my seat reservations, after I had bought the tickets?
 

Wallsendmag

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You can log into your account and change the reservations, this generates an email with your new reservations on even though the original reservations are printed on your tickets.
 

HSP 2

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The only Email that I received from LNER relating to this journey is the one attached.
001.jpg
As I didn't change my tickets after booking them on 5/3/20, all I can think is that the lady may have changed hers and somehow ended up with the same seats.
 

Haywain

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The only Email that I received from LNER relating to this journey is the one attached.
View attachment 75785
As I didn't change my tickets after booking them on 5/3/20, all I can think is that the lady may have changed hers and somehow ended up with the same seats.
She probably changed them but still went with the original seats as printed on the ticket. The new seats would have been on a separate email. If we had visibility of both tickets, yours and hers, we could say what happened with absolute certainty.
 

robbeech

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Don’t forget the Trainline element to this. Everytime (not nearly everytime) I've seen fights over seats where both sets of people DO have tickets suggesting they should be in those seats, one of the sets has been booked with Trainline. That’s not to say one of the above methods isn’t also true of course.
 

Snow1964

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She probably changed them but still went with the original seats as printed on the ticket. The new seats would have been on a separate email. If we had visibility of both tickets, yours and hers, we could say what happened with absolute certainty.

Are you saying, if you have already collected the tickets with a seat number printed on them, it still allows you to subsequently change them, and then system allows another person to book the same seats later, so get 2 sets of tickets printed for same seats.

Surely, once the tickets are printed it should lock the seat from further transfers, or should then make the seat unbookable (so if person transfers out, it becomes unreserved open seat, replacing the seat they moved to)
 

Wallsendmag

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You would think so wouldn't you but no that's more or less what we are saying. You can change your seats after purchase, but once the original booking is placed into the system the original seats will always be shown on that ticket.
 

westv

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If people remembered they had changed their seats it would help to make things that much simpler.
 

Haywain

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If people remembered they had changed their seats it would help to make things that much simpler.
That people don’t remember does make you wonder why they change them to start with.
 
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