To ask someone sitting in my reserved seat on a train to move?

[walterwhitesgf]

Yesterday I boarded my train home, which was full and found someone in my reserved seat. Not unusual in itself .There were two young women, obviously together in the pair of seats, one of which was mine, the window seat. I said 'I'm sorry I think you are in my seat ' to the one in my seat . Much eye rolling and huffing on her part and she said snappily 'well you may have a reserved seat but in which coach? I replied 'in this one, Coach C '. More huffing but she did start to get up and squeezed out past her her friend in the aisle seat. She didn't get up for me to get into my seat just turned sideways and indicated I should just squeeze past. Anyone who travels by train will know its almost impossible to do that so I had to ask the young woman to get up so I could take my seat. She was very unhappy about it and they both started moaning about having to move again. Then someone else came along who had reserved the seat next to me i.e. the one the second young woman was settling herself back down in. You can imagine the result ... she did move for this man but was very very unhappy about doing so. Anyway the reason I am posting is , a few minutes later I overheard a man saying to his partner that he didn't think we should have asked them to move as they were settled in their seats. His partner disagreed . All the seats have a display which indicates if the seats are reserved or not and from which station to which destination, so these young women knew they were in a seat that someone else had reserved. I have never felt bad before about asking someone to move but the overheard conversation made me feel uncomfortable , I am not sure why. Minor wrinkle in a day I know I just wondered what other people felt

[GraduallyGoneInsane]

I agree that people should move when asked, but the reservation system drives me potty.

I have a long commute (season ticket costs neck end of £1k a month) and use a train where the end destination is an airport, so it's always chock a block, full of suitcases. In addition, it's a major commuter route so there are always a lot of workers, particularly at peak times. I spend a grand to stand almost every day, often after a 12-15 hour day at work when I am dead on my feet, and someone with an advance ticket who has paid 2 monkey nuts gets a seat.

I would love there to be a guarentee that there is at least one carriage that is free from reservations, or a ban on reserved seats before 9am and after 5pm. This way, those who commute and pay the extortionate season rates would actually get a seat from time to time.

[walterwhitesgf]

Well no problems with seating on the way home yesterday , just a problem with heat rendering the signals unusable...tiny bit worrying but hey ho I got home eventually. I watched others who had to ask passengers to move from their reserved seats and they fell into two groups. The diffident apologetic ones ' please would you mind awfully moving but don't if its too much trouble' and the almost slightly arsey ones who just announced 'you are in my reserved seat '. I suspect the second group have had problems like mine in the past'. I shall aim for assertive but polite but I may have to rehearse that. Gradually , I have a season ticket and I am able to reserve a seat but cannot do it until the day of travel, and I know that on the trains I use London Midland and Virgin there is always at least one coach that is unreserved. However I travel to and from a very large city so its still usually jam packed every train from 4:30 onwards.
Anyway thanks to everyone who responded , its interesting that there are so many people with similar experiences, would be interesting if someone who was 'a refuser to move' posted so we could see what their reasoning was