Problem with paying for advance tickets on Avanti booking site

[Mister Ed]

I am experiencing problems with paying for my tickets on Avanti's website. I am trying to book split advance tickets for a journey that involves a Cross Country train then Avanti. It was a lot of faff to obtain sensible seating from XC (7 goes to get 2 seats actually together) though it was a lot easier to select my own pair of seats on Avanti. However, when it came to payment, Avanti told me to wait 24 hours and try again. I tried a different card before giving up this transaction but that card wouldn’t work either. This was on Saturday 11 May. I went through the whole tedious process again last evening (Sunday) and this time it worked.

This evening I tried to book the journey back, Avanti and an onward connection on XC. Again this took a while to obtain sensible seating from XC but unfortunately Avanti’s payment system has fallen over again. I have been told to wait 24 hours before trying again.

At this rate I shall be spending more time trying to book tickets than on the train. I have already experienced an increase in one of the advance fares since I started and this is for journeys over 8 weeks away.

It doesn’t look good if a major train operator cannot issue tickets online, especially when it has been government policy to close ticket offices and quote advance ticket prices whenever challenged on fares.

My questions to members of the forum are, please

1. What’s the matter with the payment bit of Avanti's online booking system?

1. Is this a known fault? When is it likely to be fixed?

1. Are particular combinations of tickets causing problems and if so why?

1. How rigid is the 24 hour wait before trying again?
2. What alternative booking system will still allow me to use choose my own seats on Avanti and ideally on Cross Country too?

Any practical advice would be appreciated, thank you.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 May 2024 ==

PS I numbered my questions from 1 to 5 but the forum has numbered everything 1 or 2.

 

[edgar13]

I am experiencing problems with paying for my tickets on Avanti's website. I am trying to book split advance tickets for a journey that involves a Cross Country train then Avanti. It was a lot of faff to obtain sensible seating from XC (7 goes to get 2 seats actually together) though it was a lot easier to select my own pair of seats on Avanti. However, when it came to payment, Avanti told me to wait 24 hours and try again. I tried a different card before giving up this transaction but that card wouldn’t work either. This was on Saturday 11 May. I went through the whole tedious process again last evening (Sunday) and this time it worked.

This evening I tried to book the journey back, Avanti and an onward connection on XC. Again this took a while to obtain sensible seating from XC but unfortunately Avanti’s payment system has fallen over again. I have been told to wait 24 hours before trying again.

At this rate I shall be spending more time trying to book tickets than on the train. I have already experienced an increase in one of the advance fares since I started and this is for journeys over 8 weeks away.

It doesn’t look good if a major train operator cannot issue tickets online, especially when it has been government policy to close ticket offices and quote advance ticket prices whenever challenged on fares.

My questions to members of the forum are, please

1. What’s the matter with the payment bit of Avanti's online booking system?
2. Is this a known fault? When is it likely to be fixed?
3. Are particular combinations of tickets causing problems and if so why?
4. How rigid is the 24 hour wait before trying again?
5. What alternative booking system will still allow me to use choose my own seats on Avanti and ideally on Cross Country too?

Any practical advice would be appreciated, thank you.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 May 2024 ==

PS I numbered my questions from 1 to 5 but the forum has numbered everything 1 or 2.

I have had the same error a few times, and even had money held (not deducted) from my account for a month but no booking confirmation.
I'm uncertain about the exact reason but I believe this bug occurs when you amend your seat.
I've asked them about this on twitter and all they've told me is to try clearing my browser cookies.
In practice you do not have to wait for 24 hours, try opening the site in incognito mode and the booking should go through.
Alternatively use this forum's booking site which allows you to select your seats too.

 

[Deafdoggie]

Unless you have a particular reason to use the Avanti website, use a different one. The forums ticket site (link at top of page) will let you select your own seats and is very unlikely to have payment problems. But if it does, post on here & someone will sort it out.

 

[Mister Ed]

Thank you to both of you for your prompt and helpful replies.

My recall is that when my booking on the Avanti site fell over on Saturday I did indeed try changing my seats from those allocated automatically. When I tried again the next day I made the same booking multiple times (without amending any seat), then rejected them all except the one that gave me suitable seats, and the whole transaction worked fine.

For the return leg I tried again yesterday, but I made and paid for two separate transactions, one for the Avanti tickets without amending any seats and the other for XC. Each transaction was successful at the first attempt. However, XC continued to wind me up as it kept offering me airline seats in different rows or diagonally opposite at a table, and lots of seats with a restricted view. Eventually I obtained two seats together with half a chance of a view then rejected all the others in my basket.

I would have been delighted to use the forum’s booking site. Much of it was similar to Avanti’s, but I was booking for two, only one of whom has a railcard. The forum’s booking site required both passengers to have railcards (or none at all).

 

[WolvertonWorks]

I too have had problems with the Avanti site when I wanted to change the seats they had allocated me so I wonder if there's a bug in the code.

Yesterday I got an email from Avanti telling me the advance tickets I was after were available - I immediately logged in, chose the tickets I wanted and it allocated me seats which I didn't like so I changed them but when I came to pay my payment didn't go through.

I cleared everything (cookies etc) from my browser and rebooted my PC so I was starting with a clean sheet and logged into Avanti again. Luckily the three tickets I wanted were still available but again the offered seats were not to my liking so I changed them and tried to pay - again the payment failed.

So remembering comments on here about seat selection on the GWR site I logged into GWR and found the tickets I wanted available there and was able to select the seats I wanted and the payment - exactly the same card used twice on the Avanti site - went through.