how to reserve seat with CARNET tickets?

[oifgiee]

i travel through my company a lot - tamworth to euston - and they have acquired lots of 'CARNET' tickets.

i rang up virgin trains who said that to reserve a seat, I would have to deal with the rail station as they couldnt reserve seats for CARNET tickets.

i couldnt find any number for tamworth rail station. can anyone here advise me on how i go about reserving a seat on the virgin trains service from tamworth to euston?

many thanks.

 

[AlterEgo]

Which number did you ring at Virgin?

Their Customer Relations team will do a few at a time for you, but by going to the station you can make large block bookings.
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I should add that it is not possible to telephone a station any more - they're all ex directory.

 

[Brucey]

You can do it in person at any ticket office.

 

[oifgiee]

thanks.
seems rubbish in this day and age that you have to go to the station in person to reserve the seat.
you should be able to quote the ticket number (or something that marks out the ticket individually), stick it in the virgin trains website and be able to reserve your seat through the net. after all, the train downloads the information for the seat reservations.

 

[island]

Given that the ticket could be sold by any TOC, it's not as straightforward as you might think.

 

[First class]

Ringing 01709 849200 will be able to assist you with making carnet reservations.

 

[lyesbkz]

.you should be able to quote the ticket number (or something that marks out the ticket individually)

It is my belief that none of the numbers on a ticket are really unique, as there is a 5 digit ticket number and a long number which has something to do with where the ticket was issued and on which terminal.

My best guess regarding uniquely identifying any particular ticket would be that a combination of both of these and the 'Printed' date (as I believe that the 'ticket number' is only sequentially incremented by the machine and isn't synchronised with anything beyond the machine itself. And I'm sure a ticket machine will eventually have printed 100,000 tickets

 

[First class]

It is my belief that none of the numbers on a ticket are really unique, as there is a 5 digit ticket number and a long number which has something to do with where the ticket was issued and on which terminal.

My best guess regarding uniquely identifying any particular ticket would be that a combination of both of these and the 'Printed' date (as I believe that the 'ticket number' is only sequentially incremented by the machine and isn't synchronised with anything beyond the machine itself. And I'm sure a ticket machine will eventually have printed 100,000 tickets

You can pinpoint an exact ticket through an internal system known as LENNON. You need the most ticket details though.

You need the place of issue NLC, date/time, to/from. Additional things like MOP, Ticket Type, Class etc can pinpoint it further.

No TOC I've dealt with is really bothered about what you hold if you're just making a reservation.

Police regularly get us to use LENNON to look for criminals moving about by rail. They'll say, a male bought a ticket from Tile Hill around 4pm going somewhere in South Wales. Can you tell us what destination he went to, and how he paid etc etc. Easy peasy.

 

[lyesbkz]

You can pinpoint an exact ticket through an internal system known as LENNON. You need the most ticket details though.

You need the place of issue NLC, date/time, to/from. Additional things like MOP, Ticket Type, Class etc can pinpoint it further.

No TOC I've dealt with is really bothered about what you hold if you're just making a reservation.

Police regularly get us to use LENNON to look for criminals moving about by rail. They'll say, a male bought a ticket from Tile Hill around 4pm going somewhere in South Wales. Can you tell us what destination he went to, and how he paid etc etc. Easy peasy.

Thanks for this insight, I've always been a bit curious

So indeed it looks like no individual number on the ticket is particularly useful on its own for pinpointing a specific ticket.

 

[34D]

Thanks for this insight, I've always been a bit curious

So indeed it looks like no individual number on the ticket is particularly useful on its own for pinpointing a specific ticket.

Me too, very useful. I suppose this is why possible dodgy tickets are withdrawn for investigation, rather than the RPI instantly being able to check.