Virgin/TPE seat allocation

[hornedrum]

Hi all, just joined.
I have searched this site for answers, but still don't full understand any of this.....

Been travelling Glasgow Central to Manchester Piccadilly all summer, booking through Virgin website, 'advance' tickets 100% of the time.
I have always had seats reserved at the time of booking.
Today I booked for November 8th-10th and all I received at the time of booking was "Reserved. No seat allocated".
Virgin say they can't book seats on other people's line (transpenine express) but they have been doing just this every time I booked over the last 2/3 months.

Any ideas as to why it would suddenly changed?
Are these routes more busy outside of summer and there are just no seats left, or some other reason?

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

 

[Bletchleyite]

If they've released counted places without seats, it is probably a temporary measure because they don't know what rolling stock they will be using on those services in that sort of time window, it could be the new CAF EMUs or 185s (but not 350s as LNR will be getting them regardless of whether TPE have finished with them or not).

 

[hornedrum]

Thanks Bletchleyite, much appreciated!

 

[Starmill]

Reserved seating has indeed been suspended for a period of several months from this autumn during the rolling stock transition, with the exception of wheelchair and companion spaces.

Virgin say they can't book seats on other people's line (transpenine express)

They definitely totally made that up.​

 

[Bletchleyite]

Reserved seating has indeed been suspended for a period of several months from this autumn during the rolling stock transition, with the exception of wheelchair and companion spaces.

It will be interesting, as an aside, to see what effect this has on speed of boarding at busy stations like Manc Picc P14.

 

[hornedrum]

Excuse my newb nativity, what does 'rolling stock transition' mean exactly?
New carriages and the booking system has not been updated yet?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Excuse my newb nativity, what does 'rolling stock transition' mean exactly?
New carriages and the booking system has not been updated yet?

The new stock will be introduced over a period of time, and so they don't know what kind of stock will operate each service.