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Original poster

To think that if you haven't booked a seat on a busy train

285 replies

MrsSchadenfreude · 26/08/2017 10:29

You don't stand huffing loudly about young people having no manners and children should be sitting on their parents' laps, and leaning heavily on people who have reserved seats? Train to Cornwall, Bank Holiday weekend, was never going to be empty.

OP posts:
Dashper · 26/08/2017 12:27

tentative3 can you tell me why a long distance journey can be cheaper in first class than standard please? To my delight, I found one recently and I'm curious as to how.

ToothTrauma · 26/08/2017 12:30

Those trains are always rammed. Who in their right mind doesn't book a seat?

DH and I were on it once and a family had booked the seats behind us. There were some lads in their 20s sitting there and when the family asked them to move they first said, 'These seats aren't reserved.' The family (very young parents with two tiny babies, looking knackered as anything) tried to show the lads their tickets and they wouldn't look, saying, 'Oh the train is so busy they've revoked all seat bookings today.'

Bloody liar! I commented over the back of my seat that this was not, in fact, true, and several other passengers chimed in. The family asked them again to move and they said, 'But we've moved twice already.'

Don't keep sitting in reserved seats then! They went in the end after some stroppy busybody (me) told them what for. The cheek! I was outraged and it wasn't even happening to me Grin

Luckymummy22 · 26/08/2017 12:31

Snickers, family of 4 (1 under 5 so free) travelling to London for weekend. Around a 100 miles away probably slightly more.
Train tickets less than £20 in total for return journey.
Booked 6 or 7 weeks in advance.
It would cost a lot more in fuel for us to drive never mind parking, congestion charge etc

YoureAllABunchOfBastards · 26/08/2017 12:31

I had a fab one not long ago - got on at Leeds going north. Sat in a seat reserved from York onwards so I was at least sitting for part of the journey.

Group of lads get on, coming back from a stag do. They sit in two seats across the aisle and a couple go further up the train, but two look at the father and son behind them and say 'you're sitting in our seats'. They check tickets and both groups have same seat number. It is all getting tense til one stag looks again - yes'm they are the same seats but not the same train: they should have been on the one that left 15 minutes ago...Grin

I got up at York and nipped into an unreserved seat - stag grabbed my seat and had to get up again ten seconds later as the guy who had reserved it got onGrinGrin

AnneGrommit · 26/08/2017 12:35

Lass - that's crazy. Yet another example of buying tickets not making sense.

Tentative, I agree that people are reluctant to give more money to the railways but that's because they already get tonnes more public money than they did when they were nationalised and even with that fares go up well beyond inflation every year in order for us to travel on rolling stock that is frankly ancient. Bloody Virgin has all these ads plastered everywhere about free wifi but you get on a train and it's one where you have to lean out the window and manually operate the handle to open the door. And how many millions in subsidy do they get for sourcing this forty year old rolling stock and charging people £200 a pop to use it? It's taking the piss.

SnickersWasAHorse · 26/08/2017 12:35

My experience of train travel in other countries is that you can rock up and buy a ticket moments before you travel for far far less than you can here.
No need to book 8 weeks in advance.

The trains in this county are a utter shambles.

gillybeanz · 26/08/2017 12:37

YANBU if seats have been booked.
However, I grew up being taught that children gave up seats for adults. Parents were less precious then and children more respectful.
If the child had a free place then yes they should be on a lap.
Just because you haven't booked a seat you have still paid and deserve a seat the same as everyone else who has paid.

ALittleMop · 26/08/2017 12:38

The train companies should manage it better.

If all the seats apart from Coach F are reserved on the busiest weeks of the year they should put more coaches on.

Or partly reimburse people who have had to stand.

Their profits could easily sustain actually providing the service that people have paid for.

ALittleMop · 26/08/2017 12:46

tentative don't worry - that is exactly what I was driving at.

if you can't meet demand, you don't get the franchise, irrespective of profit margin

(and of course if people have been unfortunate enough not to get a seat they shouldn't be unpleasant to those who are seated)

tentative3 · 26/08/2017 12:51

Dashper I don't work in pricing so can't give you a detailed response but were they advance tickets? Advance tickets have different tiers and a quota for each tier so I believe it's possible that if all but the most expensive standard tiers have sold out but all of the first tiers were still available you'd find what you've described. As to why there would ever be first tiers cheaper than standard, that I don't know!

Anne, yes I understand. The railways do get a lot of money and can be very expensive to use. The problem is, under the franchise system there's no incentive for a TOC to buy its own trains, which is no consolation to the travelling public but understandable from a commercial perspective. So those 40 year old trains aren't owned by virgin but equally it's not like virgin can just go off and get new ones. Essentially, they have what they're given.

tentative3 · 26/08/2017 12:55

The trains come with the franchise, so it's the franchise itself rather than the operator who can or cannot manage demand. Obviously management skill will mean some potential franchisees would do a better job than others but they would all be working with the same trains.

expatinscotland · 26/08/2017 12:59

YANBU. If I reserve a seat I sit in it. If someone's in it, they get out or we get the staff.

MammaTJ · 26/08/2017 13:08

A friend of mine regularly gets that train, from Taunton to Plymouth. She is always posting on FB about people being in her reserved seat and she is not bold enough to ask them to move. I must admit to losing patience with her, although I haven't told her so.

katiegoestoaldi · 26/08/2017 13:11

YANBU I remember a packed train to a popular seaside resort a couple of years ago. A friend and I had booked some seats and had three small children between us. We got on to find two old ladies in two of the seats who were most upset and put out that I asked them to move. If I hadn't the three small children would be buffered between people's legs in the aisle as it was standing room only

They scowled at us during the journey and said very loudly at one point that they should have got the bus. Well, next time they should, or book their own seats. I've never seen such a performance of two people not really trying to move seats

tentative3 · 26/08/2017 13:13

There are a lot of acronyms in this thread but it might help a little bit:

www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=106838

basically, the trains are owned by ROSCOs (rolling stock companies) who lease them to the TOCs (train operating companies). The trains are allocated by the government. That's not the full story but basically, the TOCs have very little say in what they run.

IncyWincyGrownUp · 26/08/2017 13:13

gilly my children have seats paid for and reserved. They stand for nobody on long journeys, and I don't give a flying arse how much PA shit I have thrown at me about it. If you don't reserve a seat, you take your chances. They're younger, not lesser.

I will happily offer up my own seat needed, but nobody gets to assume that my children have to stand for them because they were daft enough to assume they'd get a seat without a reservation.

DudeHatesHisCarryOut · 26/08/2017 13:14

Of course, if people had booked Open Returns they wouldn't have a reserved seat, would they?

And yes, I've also, once, had the experience of travelling cheaper in 1st Class than 2nd. Booked tickets in advance from London to Inverness, and couldn't believe it when I saw the price difference! It was great! Free meals and alcohol between London and Ed, then free coffee and biscuits up to Aberdeen. Keep hoping it'll happen again but no luck so far.

IncyWincyGrownUp · 26/08/2017 13:14

Also, payment gives you the right to travel, not a seat.

MaisyPops · 26/08/2017 13:24

Actually Virgin West Cost is working on removing reservations from the cheap advance seats. It's not fair that someone who paid £24 for their ticket can reserve but someone who paid 124 can't
That would piss me off.

The reservation is a perk of booking early.
If I book a seat on an 8 hour train journey in advance, i want a seat reserved. I get that by booking in advance (even if it's just 24 hours in advance)

The fact that someone hasnt got a reserved seat is because they havent booked in advance. They arent more entitled tonreserve a seat because they paid more.

Taking that option away on early seats is going to be ryanair move to extort more money out of people. 'Buys family of 5 worth of seats, sorry we cant guarantee you'll be together and your children may be opposite ends of the train. Would you like to pay £30 per ticket to allocate a seat?'

saveforthat · 26/08/2017 13:25

I'm 58 and could not sit on the floor or easily stand for a long journey. I always reserve a seat for a long journey but if my train was cancelled and with it the reservation, I would hope someone younger/fitter would stand for me and to be fair they usually do. When my son was young I always asked him to stand for someone who needed the seat more and now he's grown up he still does. I hate this "my children stand for no one" attitude, thankfully I have not encountered it in real life.

SapphireStrange · 26/08/2017 13:25

I don't even have kids but I've got on trains before, found my reserved seats with people sitting in them, asked politely for them to move because those are my seats, and had them say, looking genuinely baffled, 'Do you want to sit here?'

Er, yes. Hmm

EmpressOfTheSpartacusOceans · 26/08/2017 13:26

In fact I wouldn't know how not to book a seat.

Booking a seat only applies if you've booked for a specific train though. If you've got an off-peak return, for instance, you can catch any of several trains so you can't book.

MaisyPops · 26/08/2017 13:27

If all the seats apart from Coach F are reserved on the busiest weeks of the year they should put more coaches on
Agree.
But worth mentioning that most arent reserved all the way.

Eg on the edinburgh - London train there's often reservation tickets on every seat. But if you check some are actually reserved from Doncaster to peterbrough so those of us travelling between edinburgh and darlington can use those seats at will because they aren't reserved for that part of the journey.

mumoseven · 26/08/2017 13:31

Haha people sitting in my reserved seat give me the Rage! Don't care who ye are this tiny 50+ woman will make you shift. Now.
I moved two old ladies on my last journey. Go on, hop it, off you pop. I'm very polite though.
I'd shift a hairy arsed man if he sat in my seat. Which is why I was called a stupid old cunt once. How rude. I'm not that old and certainly not stupid.

JacquesHammer · 26/08/2017 13:35

We had people in our seat this week.

Train was very busy (I had inadvertently booked for when there was a large race meet) but we had booked seats.

Got on and two people (not together) were in our seats. Asked them to move. The young chap did immediately with good grace, the older bloke huffed and puffed and said "I'm only going to the next stop" (next stop in this case being 35 mins) to which I responded very breezily "well you won't mind moving so we can sit for our longer journey"..

He moved and had a face like thunder for the entire remainder of his journey Grin