Splitsavers always taking my reserved seat!!

[Chatandtea]

Is it just me but seems majority of time I get on a train, a person with a split saver ticket has taken my seat not realising that their ticket has only reserved a seat for 1 leg of their journey. Frustrated that people don’t check their reservations more thoroughly but also that the trains companies/sellers are allowing this confusion to roll on and on. Often spoils journey trying to sort the issue out

I definitely agree with that, IncomingTraffic - and if the train companies don't want to do that then they should invest in more train staff to come and check tickets constantly, moving on people who are in reserved seats.

I expect the train companies wouldn't want to do that either.

If the reservation screen says "Kings Cross to York" and "York to Newcastle" then it's usually fine to sit in the seat just after the train has left Kings Cross, so long as everyone has had the chance to find their seat. Be prepared to move at Newcastle - don't wait to be asked, be proactive: when you see someone heading your way checking the numbers you should ask "sorry, is 41 yours?"

Jumping in to someone else's seat as soon as you board is rude.

My heart always sinks when I see someone sat in my reserved seat on a packed train because I too feel awkward having to ask them to move. I always panic that I’ve got it wrong and it is actually their seat and I will look like an idiot, even if I’ve checked multiple times! That’s my anxiety though, it pops up in lots of situations that unfortunately can’t be avoided.

I had a really bad experience once on an overnight train abroad where some friends and I had a cabin reserved (so we could sleep!) and we boarded to find another group of English people asleep in there. It was so awkward having to wake them to ask them to move, and they refused anyway because another group of people were in their carriage, none of us spoke the language of the country we were passing through and the conductors didn’t have any English. So there was nothing we could do except sit in seats in one of the normal carriage all night, bright lights on, really uncomfortable seats - urgh. Didn’t even get our money back and I still rage thinking about those people a decade later!

But yeah anyway, it’s annoying but as long as people don’t get aggy about moving when you ask I don’t think there’s any more the train companies can do.

This. I have done this - had a split ticket and sat in a reserved seat, hoping the person wouldn't get on at the next station. If they do, I move. No drama.

Of course, if they won't move, they are CFs and that's when you call the guard to tell them to shift their entitled bottoms.

I was on a train once where a woman insisted on doing this. Multiple empty seats but she had to have ‘her seat’. Frankly it was a bit pathetic

She might have booked it for a reason, though - like a window seat or a particular place in the carriage. Or because she thought if she sat somewhere else then she'd be moved on by the person whose seat it actually was.

Thank you, it would be so nice to think I could just get on a train and sit in my reserved seat with no fuss. I thought it was just the split saver confusion issue but seems from this thread there is a minority of selfish people that would do it anyway despite how awkward they make anyone else feel

So if I get on a train, I am not allowed to sit in a reserved, but unused, seat in case someone is too scared to ask me to move.

That is ridiculous. How do some of you ever get anything done, if you are too worried to open your mouth to ask someone to do something.

Why wouldn't you just move to an unreserved seat? Your sneering is really unpleasant, I wouldn't want to have to deal with mouthy, entitled passengers and that is what the risk is.

I had no idea about this, OP. Never gave it a thought. In fact I've booked my boss a splitsave ticket to Edinburgh on Monday morning! Oops.

So, thank you for bringing it to my attention and YANBU to say that the train companies/ticket vendors should make it clearer.

Wow six pages of nasty snide little thieves coming up with increasingly rude and abrasive reasons why it's fine to steal something that belongs to someone else.

Obviously nicking something that belongs to someone else is rude. Sit in a reserved seat only if it's clear it's unused (eg London-Edinburgh but you left London 5 mins ago), if the seat reservation is Leeds-Edinburgh then it's fine to sit there from London to Leeds to either get up when the train reaches Leeds (sit back down only if the train leaves without the rightful owner of the seat turning up), or at the very least look around and be ready to spring up if someone approaches and is clearly looking for that seat. There's a big difference between that, and people who spread all their stuff around and put earpods in, staring out the window, pretending not to notice people asking for their seat.

And sneering and saying "well the onus is on you to ask for your stolen seat back boo hoo if you find confronting thieves difficult" - jesus, is there a full moon or something?

Plenty of people are neurodivergent, deaf, have mental illness, have PTSD, or don't speak English. Or have just had bad experiences on trains and are afraid of potential confrontation. There are lots of reasons why someone can't physically ask for their seat.

And unfortunately you can't predict how people will react to being told they're in someone's seat. Some people are lovely and apologetic and move, some get verbally abusive, some just flatly refuse to move. There have been tons of threads here where the OP as asked someone to move from a reserved seat and the other person has become abusive or belligerent, even one thread where the seat-stealer spent the rest of the journey heckling and yelling about what a C word the OP was. (Probably mental illness at play there.) I've even had one man lie to me that he was travelling with another person who was in the toilet just to prevent me from sitting in the empty seat next to him because he didn't want a disabled person near him. Look at this very thread, posters are saying it's "pathetic" to want to sit in your reserved seat. How selfish and rude!

The point is, it's not "no big deal just tell them they're in your seat and ask them to move!" when you have no idea if the person is going to react by apologising and moving, or by punching you in the face. Since Covid the amount of violence and hostility and just generally the amount of feral, antisocial behaviour in this country has shot through the roof.

I'm disabled and can't stand without pain, but I also can't speak brilliantly due to aphasia after a stroke a couple of years ago. But according to Mumsnet stroke survivors should just be forced to stand because fuck 'em, right? Fuck anyone who can't fight for themselves.

The "I've got mine so fuck everyone else" mentality here is feral.

Which you acknowledge is an oversight rather than intentional. Although I actually struggle to believe it genuinely takes 15 mins of “confrontation” to get people to move every time.

i can see it’s annoying but I agree with others than in most cases simply saying “excuse me this is my seat” shouldn’t be an issue. I also would let jump out of my seat every stop in case someone has reserved it.

Wow six pages of nasty snide little thieves coming up with increasingly rude and abrasive reasons why it's fine to steal something that belongs to someone else.

The seat belongs to the train company. 🤷‍♀️

Not at all, you'll see from my previous replies that I don't think that. But you're getting upset about people being inconsiderate when you yourself have pointed out that mostly they don't realise their reservation doesn't cover the second leg.

So you can provide the feedback or remain professionally offended with no practical effect.

And dickish comment of the thread goes to…

@Chatandtea I'd be interested in the LNER research as well, if you can send a link - I can't find anything on their website. I'm with you on disliking having to evict people from my seat, btw, though I do it.
My bugbear is LNER renaming the quiet coach the "quieter" coach. Bah, what a cop out. I want a Totally Silent Coach but I'd have to buy my own train.

@LadyAddle

https://www.lner.co.uk/news/Seat-sensor/

I have said I feel a mixture of sympathy and frustration for the people unwittingly sitting in my seat, they wouldn’t be if they checked their reservation properly and had some curiosity as to why the screen did not display a reservation for their entire journey but I acknowledged it is a major system failure too. I really cannot imagine this hasn’t been previously highlighted to the train companies and is no doubt as daily headache for the conductors but of course I do plan to add to the feedback too. No excuse for the selfish people who knowingly jump into your reserved seat before the train has even pulled away!!

For those worried unoccupied seats would be wasted for hours, LNER suggest in the above video that if 5 minutes after the train has departed a reserved unoccupied seat is empty (from the station reserved from) then you can sit there as long as willing to move if the person who has reserved the seat later turns up. I’ve said all the way through this seems fair enough but not taking someone’s seat with there being a fair chance they’ll have to ask you to move

sure a house renting belongs to a landlord but doesn’t mean is right for someone to come and squat there before you’ve decided to move in

Yes it has taken 10-15 minutes because after the initial ‘I have this seat booked’ and them replying that they also do then usually wait for guard walk through to sort it out. I could suggest it may be due to them not checking their reservation properly, wouldn’t be awful if you starting bleating on about that and found you were in the wrong ( had made an oversight yourself) so personally don’t like to push it. It’s just always awkward all round and be nicer if didn’t happen at all

Just with some consideration, lucky enough that most of people I know and work with are like this and makes life so much more pleasant

and?? ………

I wasn’t referring to taking a seat at London when the digital reservation above the seat clearly shows London to York is reserved. I mean if someone gets on at London but the reserved seat is not until say an hour into the journey. Then I see no reason why someone can’t sit in the seat for an hour then vacate it if the person with the reservation shows up.

If this puts you off getting trains you really need to build up some resilience. People sit in the wrong seat all the time for a multitude of reasons, either because they haven’t reserved one, they read their ticket wrong, or no one was sat in the seat when they got on so they assumed the person sat elsewhere.

Tbh when I booked a train the other day it didn’t make it obvious it was split, I only realised when checking that the tickets had gone in my wallet and panicked that I had got the wrong ones 😬

Some operators change the displays at that point to read "available if unoccupied"