Trainline booking fails to reserve seats.

[Bornin1980s]

You might have seen this before. I have made an advance booking via the Trainline for myself and my mother, Exeter to Middlesbrough return, largely on CrossCountry, deliberately timed for when they usually use double units.

I requested seat reservations on the form, at least I tried to. Because I got no reserved seats for any part of the journey, and the Trainline doesn't seem to offer a way to add seat reservations after booking. Anything I can try?

 

[AlterEgo]

Call CrossCountry customer relations or visit a station booking office. Alternatively, send them a message on Twitter/X.

 

[Bornin1980s]

Call CrossCountry customer relations or visit a station booking office. Alternatively, send them a message on Twitter/X.

Can either help with a booking done on the Trainline?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Should note though that it could be that none were available on the booked trains. Might just be an outage or similar though so might not be that, but no guarantees you will get them. Worth a try though.

GWR doesn't currently do this due to a bug but TPE does, or XC do it on X quite readily.

 

[Mike395]

If the train is full, worth asking XC again first thing on the day of travel. Usually they won't book reservations in the second set of a booked double unit until they're near 100% certain it's going to run.

 

[Bornin1980s]

Well, tried various inquiries, couldn't get a reservation, but have been advised to travel in the rear unit, which appears to be a refurbished one.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Apr 2026 ==

On the train now. Unreserved carriage, pretty crowded, but found seats. The new seats are pretty good.

 

[yorkie]

Well, tried various inquiries, couldn't get a reservation, but have been advised to travel in the rear unit, which appears to be a refurbished one.

If you experience this when purchasing through our ticketing site, let us know and we'd look into it for you.

We also offer a seat selector, subject to reservations being available.

On the train now. Unreserved carriage, pretty crowded, but found seats. The new seats are pretty good.

Yes if you can get a 5-car Voyager, coach B is unreserved. On an 8 or 9 car, then one of the sets is typically completely unreserved, though sometimes they do open up the other set for reservations.