Is this new (on eastcoast website)?

[trainophile]

Just booked an Advance ticket at the cheapest tier, and on the 'basket' side it said at the top "only 7 tickets left at this price". I've never noticed that before. Is this a new thing, and are all booking websites now doing it?

Going the way of hotel bookings if so - panicking us into completing the purchase .

 

[cuccir]

Panicking? Or giving useful information? A nice touch I think when planning journeys.

 

[All Line Rover]

I've noticed it for a week or two. It is a good feature. It helps you know how soon you have to book. If you are travelling as a group, it helps you know whether the fare displayed has a sufficient allocation remaining to cover your group. It also helps to identify the allocation of Advance fares on particular services, particularly where the allocation for the lowest tier is always fewer than 10.

 

[calc7]

This feature has been around for months!

 

[yorkie]

Yes its not that new and I find it very useful.

The invitation to upgrade to 1st can also ne useful, though not as useful as it could be..... if you see an EC service with no such recommendation then check out the extra manually as it may well be less than 5quid

 

[trainophile]

This feature has been around for months!

0/10 for observation then . Now I know it's there I'll take more notice in future!

Yes its not that new and I find it very useful.

The invitation to upgrade to 1st can also ne useful, though not as useful as it could be..... if you see an EC service with no such recommendation then check out the extra manually as it may well be less than 5quid

I use the eastcoast booking site, but my regular journey/s don't involve East Coast trains, and don't offer 1st Class .

I was being t-i-c about the panicking btw - it does look like a useful enhancement, and presumably updates instantly by collating all ticket sales across all sources?

Might be useful if I want to buy an Advance from a ticket office at a station that doesn't have a TOD machine, as if I check before leaving for the station and it shows there are plenty available for my chosen journey, it's unlikely they will all have disappeared in the 20 minutes it takes me to get to the station, so a stronger position for having the counter staff co-operate with my request. (In theory anyway .)

 

[lemonic]

The invitation to upgrade to 1st can also ne useful, though not as useful as it could be..... if you see an EC service with no such recommendation then check out the extra manually as it may well be less than 5quid

Thank you for this top tip, I have never noticed that before, although I do seldom travel on EC.

 

[CyrusWuff]

As a point of interest, good old CRS used to provide the same information in response to a certain query (CQA springs to mind). Though it'd only display a maximum of 9 seats being available and you could only do it for your own TOC's trains IIRC, due to reasons of "commercial sensitivity".

Give me back CRS over NRS any day...Blindingly fast and JustWorked...apart from the time someone typoed STP for Stockport instead of SPT and produced journey times of 42 minutes between St Pancras and Sheffield. XD

 

[VauxhallandI]

Panicking? Or giving useful information? A nice touch I think when planning journeys.

Because a commercial company's sales and marketing department would never do that....

 

[bb21]

Is this feature only available for East Coast services? Must admit that I have never noticed it despite booking a lot of my tickets on EC.

 

[maniacmartin]

I noticed it appear this week for me.

 

[Goatboy]

As a point of interest, good old CRS used to provide the same information in response to a certain query (CQA springs to mind). Though it'd only display a maximum of 9 seats being available and you could only do it for your own TOC's trains IIRC, due to reasons of "commercial sensitivity".

It is amazing the railway is so completely paranoid about this sort of thing. Commercial sensitivity? Complete rubbish - otherwise why would you be able to access the complete fare bucket listing, with remaining seats in each bucket, for almost any flight on the planet, in seconds over the internet?

If it was commercially sensitive information you can guarantee the airlines - who are subject to far, far more inter-operator competition - would stop it immediatly.

 

[OLJR]

Good enhancement.

 

[trainophile]

Is this feature only available for East Coast services? Must admit that I have never noticed it despite booking a lot of my tickets on EC.

Nope. I was booking an ATW & Northern journey and this came up.

 

[Tetchytyke]

They've been doing it for ages on EC priced fares.

Interesting that they're doing it for all fares now.

 

[Be3G]

Another possibility that could explain why some people saw it months ago whilst others have only noticed the feature recently, is that it could have been either in some kind of beta testing with a subset of the East Coast website's users, or it could have even been an experiment – seeing how the behaviour of customers with the availability indicator differs to those without.

 

[theblackwatch]

Is this feature only available for East Coast services? Must admit that I have never noticed it despite booking a lot of my tickets on EC.

Can't say I'd noticed it either although I've not booked much recently. Does anyone know at what level it starts saying how many tickets are left at that price? I've come across some which say 8, but a large number of services don't give any indication at all.

 

[trainophile]

Can't say I'd noticed it either although I've not booked much recently. Does anyone know at what level it starts saying how many tickets are left at that price? I've come across some which say 8, but a large number of services don't give any indication at all.

That could explain why I haven't noticed it before, as I'm usually booking 10-12 weeks ahead, but the other day it was a short notice one. Someone mentioned 10 tickets and under remaining, which would make sense.

I was quite surprised actually that there were as many as seven left with only five days to go - I'd assumed most services would only offer two or three in each band on each reservable train. Maybe now we know, we won't be in such a rush to book as soon as they are released!

 

[Howardh]

Every time I've booked a holiday or a hotel it says either "one room left" or "two". Every time. Funny that when I try to book weeks later...exactly the same thing! Clearly in the travel industry that's a big con just to get you to book when you log in.

Oh, and when I have booked the "last room" it's funny how the hotel is half-empty!!

 

[trainophile]

Every time I've booked a holiday or a hotel it says either "one room left" or "two". Every time. Funny that when I try to book weeks later...exactly the same thing! Clearly in the travel industry that's a big con just to get you to book when you log in.

Oh, and when I have booked the "last room" it's funny how the hotel is half-empty!!

And the added bit of panic-induction... "6 people are currently looking at this hotel". It took me a while to work out that even if this is true, they won't all be wanting to book it for the same night as me!

 

[Howardh]

And the added bit of panic-induction... "6 people are currently looking at this hotel". It took me a while to work out that even if this is true, they won't all be wanting to book it for the same night as me!

Ha! Even more worrying if those 6 are a rapist, murderer, psychopath, child abductor, arsonist and banker hock: