Falcon1200
Established Member
I took the 0958 from Newcastle to Kimg’s Cross today. Last Wednesday LNER sent me an e-mail saying that due to a capacity change my reservation was cancelled and I should make a reservation on another train. But there was a problem - no trains were available to rebook until four in the afternoon, a six hour delay.
I would say you should be a little wary at busier times. Your reservation will have been cancelled because a 5-car train was substituted for a 9-car, and the reservations can't be transferred across. I expect that in the circumstances the 5-car train was not reserved at all.
But as OLJR says he was told to reserve on another train altogether !
The last minute short formation happened to me in March; Only when the set arrived in the platform did I discover that my reserved seat did not exist as the train was 5 vice 9. All reservations were indeed cancelled, fortunately the train did not become busy enough for this to be a problem.
This illustrates the absurdity of LNER’s mandatory reservations policy and utter contempt of customers. I wonder if they’d have paid delay repay if you’d done what they asked and ended up on the train six hours later.
Indeed; At a time when ridership and revenue has fallen through the floor the last thing any TOC should be doing is treating its customers so poorly. Hopefully the mandatory reservation policy (or rather diktat) will not be necessary much longer.