Reservations and confusion on Avanti

[Bletchleyite]

This generally happens where one of the tickets was booked a long time ago and the timetable has changed, but the way this was done was to remove the old train and reinstate it as another one. This causes the old reservations to be lost.

 

[starlight73]

This has happened a lot recently for my partner and myself. We've boarded the train, got to our seats to find them occupied and someone producing the same reservation for the same journey on the same date. This is usually from Preston to Euston. The last time this happened we ended up standing the entire trip - my partner has a disability too - as the previous train was also cancelled and there was over 2 trains worth of people cramming onto one train. Avanti where far from helpful.

Snap! I’m sorry to hear about that especially with your partner’s disability. Exactly the same thing on my Avanti from Macclesfield (south of Manchester) to Euston yesterday. The previous train from Manchester was cancelled. I had a reservation but the train was full to standing when I boarded, there were people standing in the vestibules and aisle so I didn’t try to push my way through. There was also a man with a walking stick who said he’d reserved a seat but someone else had also had it reserved. I have a non-visible disability that prevents me from standing much (or trying to walk through the train to find the train manager) but I was fortunately carrying a folding stool.

 

[ricoblade]

I have also noticed that they will only display the currently active reservation which rather makes displaying where they're reserved to pointless. On Sunday I was travelling EUS-COV and my seat displayed "Reserved to MKC" so I was relieved when no one asked me to move and thought I was safe. Then at MKC one of the passengers joining asked me to move and I noticed the display had changed to "Reserved to Manchester". Would be much better imo to combine the reservations and simply state "Reserved to Manchester" from the beginning. Or even better remove the fake compulsory reservations flag and it should be easier to find an unreserved seat.

^^^^This^^^^

Happended to me on a Cross Country from Bristol TM to Sheffield last week. I couldn't get a reservation at booking time a few days before, nor with a cheeky ask at the booking office at TM before departure.

On a (always) busy 5-car service, I found a "reserved to Bristol Parkway" seat with no one sitting in it, then noticed this changed to "reserved from Birmingham New Street" after departure from Parkway. The reservation notifications then went blank in the whole coach before arrival at New Street. which lead to the usual mix of passive/agressive and achingly polite British behavious in these circumstances, but I managed to hold onto my seat.

To add to the mix, there appeared to be 3 people with the same reservation for one of the seats in front of me.

 

[Falcon1200]

Different form of confusion on a Pendolino today; No reservations shown on the entire train! (for which the Train Manager did apologise). Fortunately no-one claimed the seat which I chose at random.