Shouldn't they release the cheapest AP tickets first?

[142094]

I guess it might still be worth complaining? (and I've taken a snapshot of today's website). Only I'm especially annoyed as the ticket was for an elderly relative who is not wealthy.

I don't think you'd get very far in this situation, as East Coast can't really do anything about this, apart from lowering the time the ticket is kept in the basket from two hours down to something else.

 

[trainophile]

I think this tickets in baskets thing is a complete red herring. On 1st March EVERY train in the £6.96 to £44 list for 21st May was showing £13.85. No-one puts one ticket (or presumably ALL the allocation of £8.60 tickets) for all trains within a six or seven hour timeframe in their basket, do they?

I have actually had the same experience on previous occasions, before I had a Railcard so the relevant prices were £20, with £13 becoming available a day or two later. However on the occasion in question I had left it three or four days, expecting the cheapest band to appear, but when they didn't I had to bite the bullet and pay for the dearer one in case I missed the 'boat' completely.

Interesting get-out clause in the T&Cs - sounds like they are fully aware that this happens. It's bordering on sharp practice in my view.

 

[Deerfold]

I think this tickets in baskets thing is a complete red herring. On 1st March EVERY train in the £6.96 to £44 list for 21st May was showing £13.85. No-one puts one ticket (or presumably ALL the allocation of £8.60 tickets) for all trains within a six or seven hour timeframe in their basket, do they?

I don't think it's a complete red herring. However I don't think it explains what happened in your situation but probably does in littletorelate's.

Interesting get-out clause in the T&Cs - sounds like they are fully aware that this happens. It's bordering on sharp practice in my view.

Well EC certainly knowingly releases cheaper tickets later - such as the recent £25 1st class sale.

 

[calc7]

Well EC certainly knowingly releases cheaper tickets later - such as the recent £25 1st class sale.

But gets around it with the ticket type being "Reader Offer 1S" or "Web Promo Sgl" or whatever, compared with the dearer "Advance"/"Advance 1st" tickets that have regretfully already been purchased.

 

[Edyhun]

I had this with x-country last year with a train from the Midlands down to Cornwall. I complained as it does say on the website that the advance fares are the cheapest, book 12 wks in advance for the best price etc. Initially they did not want to know as I could not provide a screen shot of the lower price when it went on sale at a later date, however eventually they relented, refunded the difference and threw in an upgrade for good measure, fair enough really....

 

[littletorelate]

All,

On the problem I posted about the other day (about prices going up, and then down again on East Coast's website), I reckon I've cracked what actually happened. Firstly to summarise the original problem:-

"Yesterday evening (27 March) on East Coast Trains website I booked the cheapest quoted 1st class advance single available for the 14.00 Kings Cross to Newcastle on 04 June 2012. Price was £95. It was not showing as a "web fare". This morning (10.30 am 28 March) the same is being offered as a "web fare" for just £71.60!"

Deerfold wondered if someone else had placed a ticket in their basket at the same time, but then not bought it (locking me out from that ticket/price temporarily). But it seemed to me that this would be quite an unlikely coincidence. I was booking on a Monday evening for a train in around 10 weeks time - so hardly likely to be busy with folk clambering for the same ticket? However, his idea set me wondering about another possible explanation. I've been doing some experimenting and what I've found is the following...

I selected a train with a web-saver fare and clicked on the "Buy Now" button on EC's website. The selection was reserved on the system. I then closed that *tab* on my browser without completing the purchase. I then went back into the site. In this case I *could* still see this reservation (I'm guessing communicated to the site via a browser cookie?).

However, I then did the same but this time closed the *browser* completely (not just the tab). When I reopened the browser and went back into the site, I couldn't then recover the reservation. And, if I'd reserved the last ticket of a lower-cost batch, it was now hidden from me and couldn't be recovered (I guess until the reservation period expires - although I haven't actually checked this yet). And, yes, I confess that I *may* have been locking others out of the lowest prices during this experimentation I'm afraid!

In my case I did exactly this the other day - closed my browser after a reservation but before payment, and then tried again. I've also recalled that the reason I did this was that, at the first purchase attempt, the seat reservation screen didn't allow me to change seats for some reason. Not my error - as it worked second time - so I suspect a glitch with EC's system. To clear it though, I naturally closed my browser completely. I then reopened it and went back into the EC site to start again from scratch. I'd obviously selected the last "web saver" ticket first time round, and only a higher priced ticket was then visible on the second go.

I've checked this behaviour with both Internet Explorer and Google Chrome on EC's site and both behave this way.

I guess this is a *fairly* rare occurrence and I was quite unlucky. But it occurs if a customer abandons a purchase mid-way through for *any* reason (e.g. called away for a few minutes), closes their browser and then returns a bit later to complete the purchase. It also only occurs if you have reserved the last ticket in a price band on the abandoned first attempt. But I guess that's quite possible for some ticket types where only a few are available in the first place.

Anyway, I thought others might like to hear this explanation and the accompanying warning - even if it is a relatively rare occurrence.

I *am* going to complain to East Coast and ask for a refund of the ticket price difference - especially as I reckon it was a glitch on their system that caused me to shut down my browser in the first place. I have printouts of the screens showing the ticket price drop that occurred after my purchase, and they could confirm this behaviour for themselves anyway. So I think they have a moral obligation to give a refund, despite their "get out" clause in the web saver ticket terms & conditions.

I'll keep you posted about what they say/do (assuming they can follow what I'm on about that is!).

 

[lemonic]

It has been confirmed on here that if you are selecting the last Advance ticket(s) in a price band on the East Coast website, due to an error you are unable to change your seat reservation, which tallies with your experience.

 

[moonrakerz]

I think this tickets in baskets thing is a complete red herring. ...................................
Interesting get-out clause in the T&Cs - sounds like they are fully aware that this happens. It's bordering on sharp practice in my view.

Have to agree with this - it has happened to me on enough occasions to be more than just "tickets in the basket" !

 

[calc7]

I too have experienced similar tales of woe, resulting in me having to wait in excess of 2 hours for the ticket to drop out of the reservation that I could not retrieve so I could bag it again at the lower price. (VT&Connections ticket, but same idea).

 

[trainophile]

I'm pretty sure that when you choose to "save" a journey in your basket, there is small print that says the current price cannot be guaranteed when you return to purchase it, as it will be sold at the price available then. This messes up the argument about reserving a ticket at a given price for two hours.

I think like a lot of rail ticket pricing, there is no hard and fast rule - it depends how the system is behaving at the time!

 

[littletorelate]

OK - here's what's happening on EC's website ('cause I just tested it to prove it).

You're lucky(?) enough to grab the last ticket available in a particular price band. (A punter wouldn't normally know this of course - I checked the number of tickets on offer by retrying and "upping" the number of adult tickets requested by one each time.)

You click on "Buy Now" and go through to the seat reservation screen. You try and change your seat allocation and get an error message saying you can't (as someone has noted above for the last ticket of a batch). I've tried several times and it always does this.

So you think "oh, there must be something up with my browser" (well that's what I thought). So you close it down, open it up again, and, hey presto, that ticket price has now disappeared from the list of those on offer.

Thanks for all the pointers on what was happening - it was v. useful. I'm still going to complain to East Coast. This behaviour and result is unacceptable in my opinion. I'll let you know...

 

[Paul Kelly]

East Coast know about it and have confirmed it to a number of other customers as a known issue. It's actually a pretty tricky problem. To secure availability of an advance fare on a particular train, the booking engine must make a seat reservation. When you try to change your seat, it then attempts to make a new seat reservation before releasing the old one. But if you had booked the last seat available at that advance price tier, it can't do this and you end up not being able to change the seat.

I think East Coast needs to get its booking engine supplier (Atos Origin) to fix this bug and change the system so that it offers you the opportunity to choose your seat before making any seat reservations at all. But I don't know how successful they'll be at getting that change made. Probably the more people who complain about it, the more under pressure they'll be though...

 

[littletorelate]

East Coast know about it and have confirmed it to a number of other customers as a known issue. It's actually a pretty tricky problem. To secure availability of an advance fare on a particular train, the booking engine must make a seat reservation. When you try to change your seat, it then attempts to make a new seat reservation before releasing the old one. But if you had booked the last seat available at that advance price tier, it can't do this and you end up not being able to change the seat.

Thanks Indigo2. At the risk of boring everyone with my nerdy amateur systems-analyst hat on, I'm not sure you're right here?...

For a first class ticket, the seating allocation should surely be constrained only by the total number of available physical seats in the first class coaches, not according to the no. of first class tickets available in a particular price band? I reckon it should work like this (for first class tickets in this example, although the same process applies to standard class):-

A customer selects a 1st class ticket type with reservable seating (of whatever price/flexibility type is available, and they wish to purchase). They then click "Buy Now". At this point the booking engine arbitrarily reserves an available 1st class seat (irrespective of the ticket type & price band).

The customer then goes through to the seat type/no. selection screens, where they're able to change the seat allocation if they wish (although possibly with limitations according to what's already allocated to other customers - e.g. there may be no more window seats). In the case of it being the last of all the first class ticket types with reservable seating, then clearly the customer would get no choice (wouldn't be able to change the automatically allocated seat at all).

I agree that in order to change a seat, the system has to first reserve the new one selected before releasing the old, but it can always do this provided there is of course at least one spare physical seat available in all the first class carriages.

In my case, there were plenty of vacant first class seats shown on the seating plan in the seat re-selection screen (plus a few occupied ones). This is as one would expect as this was the last of the block of web-saver priced tickets only, not the last of all reservable first class tickets on this train. Indeed, this screen would allow me select a new vacant seat, but it wouldn't then confirm the new selection when I clicked "Confirm". It just returned an error message (and I tried several times for different vacant seat positions).

It was this that led me to close my browser down and re-enter the system from scratch. And then of course I was locked out of getting the web-saver rate at this point because it was the last of the block, and still reserved in EC's system (although not then visible to me).

I reckon this seat-allocation bug is actually quite serious. There must be a fair no. of people who either accept a seat position they don't want, or who lock themselves out of that price-band by resetting their browser and buying the next band up thinking another customer has snapped up the last of the lower. Consider that if there are (say) ten 1st web-saver fares allocated per train, and customers book two tickets each. Then this will happen for every fifth customer. Not an insignificant number! - and the cost difference can be quite large.

 

[OwlMan]

If you think the seat changing bug is serious the TOC have a simple answer - stop all reserved seat changes it will be far eassier than getting ATOC to change the NRS.

Peter

 

[Paul Kelly]

@littletorelate, I glossed over the details a bit to make it more readable. I agree with nearly all of what you've written; the one point I think you might not fully appreciate is just how tightly the availability of quota-controlled fares is tied to seat reservations.

To reserve a quota-controlled fare the system must make a seat reservation against a particular ticket type (each advance price tier is technically a different ticket type), and this results in the quota for that ticket type being reduced (possibly to zero as we've seen) for the relevant journey segments on the train concerned.

So when you then try to change your seat it's not "just" making another seat reservation - the new seat reservation must also be made against the ticket type concerned, and if the quota for that ticket type is now zero then it will fail, and you can't change your seat.

I reckon this seat-allocation bug is actually quite serious. There must be a fair no. of people who either accept a seat position they don't want, or who lock themselves out of that price-band by resetting their browser and buying the next band up thinking another customer has snapped up the last of the lower. Consider that if there are (say) ten 1st web-saver fares allocated per train, and customers book two tickets each. Then this will happen for every fifth customer. Not an insignificant number! - and the cost difference can be quite large.

Agree about the frequency of the problem - it's surprising how often it comes up here - but not the severity - being able to change your seat when booking online is a relatively new, added-value feature, and it's clearly been rolled out without proper testing. The obvious solution is just to let you choose your seat first rather than making a reservation for a random seat. Also if you book a normal advance fare at a station you can choose your seat, although obviously that's not an option with web-only fares.

Curious as to why you just closed your browser and didn't try to cancel the transaction first; not sure if that would have helped, but it might have...

If you think the seat changing bug is serious the TOC have a simple answer - stop all reserved seat changes it will be far eassier than getting ATOC to change the NRS.

I don't think the fix needs any changes to the reservation system; just a re-ordering of the steps in the WebTIS booking process. WebTIS isn't trying to change the seat reservation (if it did it wouldn't be a problem as far as I can see) - it is trying to make a new reservation and then delete the old provisional one afterwards.

 

[trainophile]

Just to throw another spanner in the works, ATW and London Midland don't issue actual seat reservations, only timed train coupons, so with my only add-on journey segment being on Merseyrail the seat reservation thing wouldn't apply, would it? (Genuine question - I'm getting more and more confused now!).

 

[Paul Kelly]

I don't believe there is any practical difference in the way a quota-controlled fare is booked, between those "timed train coupons" and normal seat reservations, just that your reservation is in coach * and seat ***.

 

[trainophile]

Agreed, but in which case there would be no point attempting to change the booking to a different seat because no specific seat had been allocated anyway.

I think we have two overlapping situations under discussion in this thread now.

 

[Paul Kelly]

I think we have two overlapping situations under discussion in this thread now.

I think we have three!

1. ATW quota for lower advance tiers appearing to be released a few days after that for higher tiers
2. "Choose your seat" extension to East Coast booking engine not working if you have booked the last available quota in a particular advance tier
3. Abandoning a booking by closing your browser window tying up advance quota, making it unavailable for a few hours

 

[trainophile]

Lol yes, and I think you're probably the only one still keeping up with it all!

Maybe time to move along (the train please!), hopefully having alerted at least some of the general public to something they need to be aware of.

 

[littletorelate]

Hi Indigo2. Apologies for the delay in replying, and also if I'm confusing folk by keeping these intertwined threads alive. But I did just want to answer your points, and it's difficult to "de-interwine" the threads.

You say: "the new seat reservation must also be made against the ticket type concerned".

By "must", do you mean it has to work this way? If so, I still don't think I agree. If it's a first class ticket, surely the seat allocation can be any vacant seat in the 1st carriages, irrespective of the ticket type (price band)? At least that's the way I would expect it to work?

"The obvious solution is just to let you choose your seat first rather than making a reservation for a random seat."

I don't think that's the problem (the system allocating a provisional seating position). That's the way airline booking systems work, and any capability to reallocate seats at online check-in has always worked OK for me. I just think there's just a bug in the seat re-selection software on EC's system at the final stage before payment.

"Also if you book a normal advance fare at a station you can choose your seat".

Presumably any vacant seat in the 1st class carriages (for a 1st class fare)? Which shows it can be done... it's just a matter of adding an interface correctly to the online booking system to allow the same.

"Curious as to why you just closed your browser and didn't try to cancel the transaction first; not sure if that would have helped, but it might have..."

I closed the browser because I thought there may be a glitch in (what I assumed) is a javascript application(?) in the browser that runs the seat reselection bit. It simply didn't occur to me that it would be wise to cancel the transaction first so as not to lock the reserved ticket in the system so that it wouldn't be immediately visible to me again.

And on that last point - after some more trials, I've discovered that other TOC sites behave differently with respect to storing the ticket reservation before the payment stage. Unlike East Coast, Virgin and Great Western (for example) both require a customer to login to their account before they can reserve a ticket. If you then close the browser before payment - reopen and go back in to the site - then login to your account again, the original reservation does then show in the basket.

And the irony is that neither of these TOCs currently allow you to change seat reservation positions anyway, so there's no bug that is likely to cause someone to close/reopen their browser before payment.

 

[Deerfold]

Hi Indigo2. Apologies for the delay in replying, and also if I'm confusing folk by keeping these intertwined threads alive. But I did just want to answer your points, and it's difficult to "de-interwine" the threads.

You say: "the new seat reservation must also be made against the ticket type concerned".

By "must", do you mean it has to work this way? If so, I still don't think I agree. If it's a first class ticket, surely the seat allocation can be any vacant seat in the 1st carriages, irrespective of the ticket type (price band)? At least that's the way I would expect it to work?

I think by "must" he means the national ticketing system will only allocate a ticket to the booking engine if it also reserves a ticket. Once that seat is allcoated the ticket cannot be rebooked - there is no provision for the East Coast engine to change the seat except by trying to rebook and then cancelling the old booking.

You could argue that shouldn't be the way it works but it'd need bigger changes than East Coast could make unilaterally. As you see it's only come to light as EC have tried to offer more functionality.

If you get a new seat reservation at a station (or by phone) I think they simply give you the reservation without cancelling the old one which would be impractical in large numbers.

 

[Paul Kelly]

You say: "the new seat reservation must also be made against the ticket type concerned".

By "must", do you mean it has to work this way? If so, I still don't think I agree.

Well yes, I just mean it's because of the way that the advance fare system works and the way it's tightly integrated with the seat reservation system.,

If it's a first class ticket, surely the seat allocation can be any vacant seat in the 1st carriages, irrespective of the ticket type (price band)? At least that's the way I would expect it to work?

Yes exactly.

"The obvious solution is just to let you choose your seat first rather than making a reservation for a random seat."

I don't think that's the problem (the system allocating a provisional seating position). That's the way airline booking systems work, and any capability to reallocate seats at online check-in has always worked OK for me.

But that's a completely separate computer system from a separate industry! Is there any reason to think that the railway system works the same?

I just think there's just a bug in the seat re-selection software on EC's system at the final stage before payment.

That's exactly the point - it's not re-selecting a seat; it is trying to make a new reservation with the same ticket type (without cancelling the old one first). And if there is no quota left for that ticket type then it can't make the reservation and the seat changing facility doesn't work.

"Also if you book a normal advance fare at a station you can choose your seat".

Presumably any vacant seat in the 1st class carriages (for a 1st class fare)? Which shows it can be done...

But that's a different thing. The booking clerk wouldn't be trying to make two reservations as the East Coast booking engine is doing; they would just make one (the correct one, in the first place) and be done with it.

it's just a matter of adding an interface correctly to the online booking system to allow the same.

Do you mean to let you pick the seat you want before making the seat reservation? If so, I agree.

And on that last point - after some more trials, I've discovered that other TOC sites behave differently with respect to storing the ticket reservation before the payment stage. Unlike East Coast, Virgin and Great Western (for example) both require a customer to login to their account before they can reserve a ticket. If you then close the browser before payment - reopen and go back in to the site - then login to your account again, the original reservation does then show in the basket.

And the irony is that neither of these TOCs currently allow you to change seat reservation positions anyway, so there's no bug that is likely to cause someone to close/reopen their browser before payment.

Virgin and FGW both use the trainline booking engine (East Coast uses WebTIS). CrossCountry also uses thetrainline, but they do have a "select your seat" facility. I haven't looked at it in depth to see how it works but as far as I remember it does allocate a default seat before allowing you to change it; perhaps however it does the decent thing and changes this seat reservation rather than trying to make a second one like East Coast's system does. Might be worth experimenting with. I can't remember seeing any complaints about it on here like there have been about East Coast's system though.

 

[Optimo]

I realise this convo has gone on quite far towards seat booking glitches, but I wanted to chip in with the view on the Virgin train web site, which seems patently misleading for anyone wanting to save on tickets:

If you buy tickets less than 3 months before travel, but before the Advanced fares go on sale, you will certainly not save.

E.g. we are now less than 3 months away from 29th of June, yet the Advanced fares are not yet available for that date.

Anyone with no knowledge of the booking horizons or trainline / tools pages would easily be led to believe that the cheapest fares were now currently available for that date (< 3m away), and that they were going to 'save more' by booking right now.

 

[table38]

Last night I managed to book some cheap first-class advances for a Cross Country service for June 21st on the Northern web site, whereas the Cross Country site had none available!

 

[DaveNewcastle]

There is no Condition which binds any TOC to release all their quotas of Advances for any service in one batch, I think it is more a matter of custom and practice that this is what they do. Most of us simply presume that is what all TOCs do with all of their Advances but there have been exceptions and I'm sure there will continue to be exceptions.

I asked the East Coast "Talk to Us" forum today (staffed by senior Management and Directors) "how often are subsequent quotas of Advance tickets released for services some days AFTER the initial quota for those services have been released?" and received this answer: "This in general does not happen other than potentially for a specific promotion."

That reply doesn't quantify the occasions when a later quota of Advances are released, but does tend to suggest that it does happen, albeit very rarely.

 

[trainophile]

Been doing a bit of a survey myself Dave, and have found that (at least on my regular journey, HFD to SOP) routinely now they load the system with nothing but £13.85 tickets (inc. Senior Railcard, sorry not sure of price without), for up to four days before the £8.60 ones appear. Often my Advance Single returning SOP to HFD £8.60 ticket appears a day or two before my outward one, so it doesn't seem to be tied to how close to departure I'm enquiring.

Recently this is evident every week from the first availability of anything other than walk-up fares, i.e. the appearance of the Standard Advance box in the ticket options. I have found the same on ATW's own website, so it seems unrelated to which operator I am buying my tickets through. I've been buying these online for four years and it's only in the last couple of months that this has been the case.

If that's the way they want to do it, they should at least stop telling everyone to buy "as early as possible" to get the best price. They must be raking it in by catching the unwary. Got caught myself that one time, but I know better now and wait for the cheaper ones, that I know will appear eventually.

Thanks for taking this up. It seems more than fishy to me, but presumably it's above board or they wouldn't do it, would they?

 

[DaveNewcastle]

@trainophile

. . . routinely now they load the system with nothing but £13.85 tickets

. . . . . If that's the way they want to do it, they should at least stop telling everyone to buy "as early as possible" to get the best price. They must be raking it in
. . . .

but presumably it's above board or they wouldn't do it, would they?

Who is "they" in your post?

For clarity, I have not been aware of any reason why any TOC should not release whatever quota of Advances they want at whatever time they want. In the absence of any reason, then none of us should have concerns when other quotas are released later.
The choice of ticket retailler isn't going to help us if we are considering the release of tickets by the Operating Company being at odds with that same Company's publicity announcements.

The implied criticism of accuracy in a TOC's Advertising is a different matter, and if I understand you correctly, there may be a misleading term in some adverts. If you could clarify which TOC has said what and then done something else, then I may be willing to assist in pursuing the matter.

 

[trainophile]

Oops sorry, I know "they" is extremely vague, but tbh I don't know who is responsible for releasing/loading Advance tickets into the system for general availability. I'd imagined that each TOC sends in prices for their own areas of routing that they are responsible for, and some central control operation collates them into all the relevant journeys where APs are offered, but I'm probably far from correct in that.

As regards point (2), I picked this up via a link that someone posted the other day to brfares.com, by following through to "info" against the cheapest listed fare, which in this case was Virgin Trains @ £6.95 (which incidentally I have never seen offered for HFD-SOP although have used it occasionally for SOP-HFD).

AVAILABILITY:
Tickets must be purchased in
advance of travel, subject to
availability, and are not
available on the day of travel
. Customers should book as far
in advance as possible to get
the cheapest fares.

http://www.brfares.com/#detail?orig=1283&dest=2611&rlc=90&fare=19

 

[DaveNewcastle]

On which Company's trains are these Advance tickets offering a reservation?