Seat Reservation Question

[billh]

Yesterday went to buy return tickets for Manchester- Totnes(Devon) in February. Two people travelling together ( or not!), one pays full fare, the other on BR retired staff pass. The helpful person in the ticket office said he could not make seat reservations together as there has to be two separate transactions , not one for two people.The implication being that if two people were buying tickets (total near £300), that seat reservation would be adjacent. However , he did manage to make the seat reservations for all parts of the journey to be in the same coaches. Please can an expert explain what goes on here?
Bill

 

[gray1404]

Was one of the person's travelling on an Advance ticket or was it a walk up fare? If it was a walk up fare there is no reason why the person making the reservations could not have made reservations for two people and ensured the seats a next to each other.

 

[Merseysider]

Assuming you will be travelling with CrossCountry, you can choose specific seats (together) if you buy your tickets through their own website, and view a seating plan of the entire train when making your choice.

Alternatively, if you already have your tickets, you can contact their Twitter team online; they’ll be more than happy to reserve two adjacent seats (and cancel your previous reservations if they’re no longer needed).

£300 seems rather expensive for this journey - TrainSplit.com would probably be able to reduce that figure significantly.

 

[billh]

Was one of the person's travelling on an Advance ticket or was it a walk up fare? If it was a walk up fare there is no reason why the person making the reservations could not have made reservations for two people and ensured the seats a next to each other.

It was a standard off-peak return, any permitted route, booked at a Northern ticket office.

 

[AlterEgo]

It was a standard off-peak return, any permitted route, booked at a Northern ticket office.

Then that’s silly on the part of the ticket office staff.

What they’ve done is issue the Off Peak Return with a seat reservation at the time off booking. No need for him to issue said seat reservation (wait and see...).

They’ve then tried separately to reserve a seat for the staff pass, which I assume is going to be using boxes, so there is no ticket to sell.

What they should have done is issue the Off Peak without a reservation and simply reserved two seats on a different transaction with no ticket present in that transaction. This can be done - you can reserve seats after the time of booking a ticket.

 

[bb21]

Take it back to the ticket office. They should be able to reserve two seats together without a ticket as AlterEgo explained, and cancel the original reservations.

It is only not possible if no suitable spares seats remain.

 

[billh]

Take it back to the ticket office. They should be able to reserve two seats together without a ticket as AlterEgo explained, and cancel the original reservations.

It is only not possible if no suitable spares seats remain.

Went back to same ticket office, different staff on duty,2 seat reservations together on 4 different trains sorted no problem. Thank you all for advice.
Bill