Seat reservation mystery

[yorkie]

This happens all the time to me on LNER and Cross Country, no matter what I select - Table, Forward, Window - I get the opposite - Airline, Backward, Aisle.

On LNER I use the seat selector to change my seats and there are *always* ones that meet my preferences.

LNER have reversed the seat maps for their trains. Their own site reverses the reversed map, to make it the right way round.

My understanding is that LNER have chosen to do this and refuse to fix it; presumably because it benefits them by encouraging people to book directly with them (thus reducing the risk that people find cheaper split tickets elsewhere).

Our site will let you choose a specific seat, but you'd need to refer to the seating plan PDF document, to ensure the seat matches your particular requirement.

LNER are trying all sorts of tricks; check out this thread to find out some other examples of what they are up to!

 

[Tetchytyke]

TPE seems to be especially bad at this sort of thing. What's particularly dumb is when I'm travelling alone and I want an individual airline seat, yet it keeps putting me in a seat at a table for 4. A good 66% of the time even TrainSplit's seat selector errors out when I try to change it. And this is in cases where I'm travelling the full distance, e.g. Liverpool to Newcastle. Seems to be an issue on both Novas and the 185s, so goodness knows what TPE have done to the data.

 

[Tester]

LNER have reversed the seat maps for their trains. Their own site reverses the reversed map, to make it the right way round.

My understanding is that LNER have chosen to do this and refuse to fix it; presumably because it benefits them by encouraging people to book directly with them (thus reducing the risk that people find cheaper split tickets elsewhere).

Isn't this the sort of thing that would benefit from a little 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant'?

 

[OscarH]

LNER have reversed the seat maps for their trains. Their own site reverses the reversed map, to make it the right way round.

My understanding is that LNER have chosen to do this and refuse to fix it; presumably because it benefits them by encouraging people to book directly with them (thus reducing the risk that people find cheaper split tickets elsewhere).

Our site will let you choose a specific seat, but you'd need to refer to the seating plan PDF document, to ensure the seat matches your particular requirement.

LNER are trying all sorts of tricks; check out this thread to find out some other examples of what they are up to!

The forum site should have correct LNER seat maps now, if it has incorrect ones then please shout. (it's obvious if the seats are backwards because the seats around a table sized gap face the wrong way).

They actually weren't all backwards, just northbound ones, and then they reversed the seats in the backwards seat map so that "forwards" and "backwards" for people not using a seat selector were correct. We added a horrible bodge that undoes the bodge.

TPE seems to be especially bad at this sort of thing. What's particularly dumb is when I'm travelling alone and I want an individual airline seat, yet it keeps putting me in a seat at a table for 4. A good 66% of the time even TrainSplit's seat selector errors out when I try to change it. And this is in cases where I'm travelling the full distance, e.g. Liverpool to Newcastle. Seems to be an issue on both Novas and the 185s, so goodness knows what TPE have done to the data.

If you continue to see high failure rates as of this week then send it over to the customer support email. Can't promise we can do anything about it, in some cases our hands are tied, but we've tried to make some improvements to block seats that are "available" but will never succeed.

 

[elaine66]

Is there a similar issue with GWR? Been having problems for a while with finding that seats described as forward-facing are actually backwards and last time I travelled with them, on tickets booked on the forum site, despite having spent ages poring over the seat maps, I had somehow managed to get backwards seats for both the outward and the return journey. Fortunately neither train was busy so I was able to relocate, as the result of me travelling backwards for any length of time is not pretty.

 

[Zamalek]

GWR's website invites you to "book another service as your seating preference is not available" despite there being many many seats available that fit the very same preference.
.

Including the seat they've just allocated you ....

 

[OscarH]

Is there a similar issue with GWR? Been having problems for a while with finding that seats described as forward-facing are actually backwards and last time I travelled with them, on tickets booked on the forum site, despite having spent ages poring over the seat maps, I had somehow managed to get backwards seats for both the outward and the return journey. Fortunately neither train was busy so I was able to relocate, as the result of me travelling backwards for any length of time is not pretty.

No similar backwards maps situation that I'm aware of, but I think it's more possible for their services to end up in backwards formation compared to the other TOCs that have directions (TOCs like XC and TPE just don't even try with directions because it's too unpredictable)