There are only three retailers which do not charge the standard £10 fee as far as I'm aware. Chiltern only charge £5, TransPennine Express charge no fee but you must have the excess (i.e. the ticket which changes your booked service) posted out, so you must do so at least 2-3 days in advance of travel (for UK post). CrossCountry offer the best of the bunch IMO - as they also charge no fee, but you can also simply pick up new tickets at a machine, or get e/m-tickets. You then send back the old tickets for a refund - or if they were e/m-tickets then they simply get cancelled. However, I've sometimes experienced it where orders fail to show up in the My Account section, and then they can't be changed any more.
No problem - however be aware that you must book via their desktop website in order to be eligible for this. Bookings made via the mobile app or the mobile website are not eligible for fee-free changes.
Ah OK, I must have got it mixed up then. Still, mobile app bookings are not eligible.
I have been able to change XC-booked Advances with far less than 24 hours left - the only limiting factor is how quickly the tickets can be generated (if e/m-tickets) or added to the system (if ToD).
I've encountered this issue a fair few times actually - however, whilst I've been able to phone Web Support to do the changeovers, they've only ever been able to do it where I buy the new ticket whilst on the phone with them, and then they refund the old ticket once they see it's gone through. Obviously this is far from ideal as it takes far longer and is much more hassle than the usually painless process of changing tickets through the website.
If a lot of walk up ticket holders reserve lots of seats then Advance tickets showing availability may not be able to complete a transaction on very popular services.
That's not correct; there simply won't be Advance ticket availability
Yes, I could have been clearer in my original response
It does because of the NRS bug that sees wheelchair spaces as empty seats but isn't able to book them.
Yes, that's true, but I didn't think that's what Sleepy was saying - he / she didn't mention wheelchair spaces
It doesn't show up as a wheelchair space though it just shows as an available advance but fails when trying to book it.
I think you get to the stage of being shown the availability of the ticket in conjunction with the train service, but then when proceeding to the step of adding the (mandatory) seat reservations to the basket it will say that it could not reserve seats.