seat reservations on train.....not being given, despite it being available, preferred seat.

[lurkerspeaks]

I might well be BU. So am interested in your opinions.

I'm travelling for work today which I now do a lot and contrary to my previous misconceptions it is terribly tedious and tiring. I'm on a route where there is huge train vs. plane competition. The train operating company are investing heavily to get people like me off the plane into the train.

My PA didn't book me a seat on the train home as she didn't know what time my meeting would finish. I did so took myself off to the ticket office prior to my outward journey to get a seat reserved for the return because as you can see it is Friday afternoon and I am expecting the train will be busy.

I had to queue for about 15mins to get served and specifically explained to the bloke I wanted a single seat and not to share a table, especially a four share table, as I never get any work done when sitting like this.

I've just got on the train and my reserved seat is on a four share table. There are several single seats in this carriage alone, which are unreserved. I have therefore decamped so am able to sit in the way I like but there was no guarantee that this would happen.

I'm (? irrationally) annoyed that despite going to all the effort of queueing up and explaining my seating desires the bloke in the ticket office didn't give me what I wanted and didn't tell me that he hadn't given me what I wanted. To put it in perspective an open return ticket on this route (which is what I'm travelling on costs £390).

If I travel by plane I automatically get my seating preference (it is recorded against my frequent flyer no) and when I check in I can move myself if I want to.

So go on - AIBU in expecting the guy in the ticket office to honour my polite request for a particular type of seat and if unable to honour it to tell me that I wasn't sitting in the way I like.

Well I think YANBU. You weren't demanding someone else be bumped from their seat, just to reserve a seat that was free. If it were the other way round and you wanted a table of four to yourself, that would have been wrong, but surely this is better, if anything, because now a family or party travelling together can sit at a table. I would have been annoyed too.

Sympathy here - I also travel by train a lot for work and often the reservation system on the train itself fails so no reservations/ seat numbers show up. Annoying. Yanbu.

YANBU - there is something wrong with the reservation system. A similar thing happened to me. I was travelling first class, and three of us (travelling separately) were seated in reserved seats together at a table, while the rest of the carriage was empty and unreserved. Very odd.

sometimes the carriage seat plans are all to cock though! SOoooo ticket office guy may have thought that he had booked you a single table seat, but on that particular train, the single table seat number is somewhere else

We have had this happen, three children, two adults we were supposed to be a four and one behind, we were all over the bloody place, but after a whinge to the guard we got bumped to first class! :o Tea and biccies all the way!

So YANBU but it might not have been his fault.

YANBU, I specifically selected the option to have a power socket when travelling by train recently. The seat I was reserved didn't have one, but there were unreserved seats that did. Very annoying!!

YANBU. Welcome to travelling by train in the UK!

Any chance he just misunderstood you? But no, YANBU. Lucky there were spaces, eh?

This happened to me recently. I was travelling with my 6 month old DS and didn't really want to annoy anyone who was sat next to me. Explained this when I was booking tickets. The man said they could book me an individual seat which I thought would be one of the single seats you see at the ends of carriages.
When I got on the train I found I had been given a seat in a table of four. However when I questioned this with the guard on the train he explained that all 4 seats were reserved in my name so I could have plenty space. It may be that this is what happened to you.

It is a bit embarressing having to explain that someone is sitting in your reserved seat that isnt showing as reserved grrr