Virgin East Coast Website Problem

[parkender102]

Every Week on the Virgin East Coast Website I buy an Off Peak Return St Neots - Shotton via London at £94.50. Usually pick up at the station. This morning it's telling me 'No fares have been found for your selected service'. Has something changed?
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Decided to use the National Rail Website instead. Booked no problem. Strange I thought that the Confirmation email was from Virgintrains.com. I was also impressed that on the National Rail Website you can actually change your Reserved Seat and Coach using 'drag and drop' on the actual carriage layouts so you can see exactly which seat you are sitting in. The Virgin Trains East Coast website just allocates you a seat according to preference but there is no 'drag and drop' facility if you want to change. I think it is available if booking an Actual East Coast Trains service i.e Kings Cross to Edinburgh, but not for a Virgin West Coast or other operator service.

 

[Tetchytyke]

nationalrail.co.uk doesn't sell tickets, it refers you to a TOC website which does. Normally this is the TOC that operates the main part of your journey, in this case Virgin Trains (West Coast).

 

[Romilly]

If when using the VTEC website you click on the Timetables Only option and then use the Calls At option to specify a station at which you want your trains to stop, and then click on Buy a Ticket to get back to the mixing deck, my experience is that the journey planner remembers your Calls At option. So if (for example) the OP had been trying to buy a St Neots to Cambridge ticket just before the St Neots-Shotton one, and had specified "Calls at Ely", the chances are that the journey planner would then be looking for tickets for St Neots to Shotton calling at the somewhat off-route Ely, hence the "no fares" message. Just a thought. (The solution is to again click through to timetables, leave the "calls at" box blank, and then importantly click on Update before clicking on Buy Tickets.)

 

[parkender102]

nationalrail.co.uk doesn't sell tickets, it refers you to a TOC website which does. Normally this is the TOC that operates the main part of your journey, in this case Virgin Trains (West Coast).

Ah right. I must not have noticed the Website had changed when re-directed. I much prefer the Virgin Trains East Coast Website to book tickets as it seems a lot more user friendly compared to the Virgin Trains West Coast site.