AIBU to ask who was right in this situation... Couple refused to move for a 'mum' and her 3 children on the train. (When the mum had reserved the seats.)

[FreshWinterMorning]

Just that really. Whose side are you on here?

I won't say much yet as I don't want to skew the poll results.

So pick YABU if you think the mum is in the wrong.

And pick YANBU if you think the couple is in the wrong.

Thank you for participating.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7602911/Furious-mother-three-slams-elderly-couple-refusing-seats-reserved.html?ito=social-facebook&fbclid=IwAR0C3fJhfMxidfTyOfm8wJ2C7v7st2ZgeCZi3aDr8YlabYhoaoMWM_lI_Ik

Unless there was an announcement that said reservations were cancelled,

There was. You’re getting a very selective account from the mum.

If you have reserved seats then they are yours - elderly couple should not have taken them, or to have moved when the "reservers" arrived. I have a disability and book seats on trains because I am not able to stand for any length of time. It often happens that someone sits in them, which I can understand if it is on a leg of the journey for which the seat is not reserved. But sometimes people refuse to get up - on one occasion a very scary young man (looked like a bouncer) "sorted it out" for me!

In the comments of that article, it clearly states the seat reservations had been cancelled that day due to lack of carriages- which makes sense as the conductor didn’t ask the couple to move from their seats.

it sounds to me like a very one sided story and we should be careful to jump in without knowing all the facts.

Yes, it would have been kind to move but I was always taught to give up my seats for the elderly anyway and although harder to manage, it certainly didn’t require the drama that followed.

If you have reserved seats then they are yours

No, not in this case. There were no seat reservations. They’d been cancelled on the whole train.

This. They should have reserved seats if they were that fussed. They sounded very entitled and like they thought they could pay the old / posh card

If being entitled means seating my disabled mum over 3 healthy kids then I’m fine with that.

@tachycardigan if you had the option to book your mum a seat and didn't bother, and just took other people's seats then That would be a shitty thing to do. I'd offer your mum my seat if it wasn't possible to reserve, sure. But not if she just couldn't be arsed.

But as people have said a million times, we don’t have the elderly couple’s story.

Maybe the reserved seats were all taken so they couldn’t book, as the press says the train was jammed.

Maybe the family were more than 10 minutes late to their seats so their reservations were rescinded.

Maybe the reservations were cancelled altogether, so it became a free for all.

I’d have taken a lot of pleasure in leaving them with my 3 bored and often quite badly behaved children and finding myself a seat elsewhere 🤣

That's my experience too - I don't drive and regularly travel by train. Often it's because the train is shorter than planned - which adds to the chaos - or a different class of train, e.g. an Azuma when it should be a 91 or 43.

Sometimes there's a technical error with the reservation system. A member of staff told me that if the train has the wrong 'head code' then the reservations aren't recognised by the computer even if it's the same class of rolling stock.

No need for this ageist language.

They did reserve seats!

i belong to another generation. I was taught to give my seat up to the elders.

I'm over 70 and certainly wouldn't expect anyone to give up their reserved seat for me. I book before I travel and if I can't reserve a seat I go on another train.
It's just unreasonable to expect to be able to sit in somebody else's seat.
I've been on trains where the cards simply hadn't been put out, nothing to do with the length of the train or the number of seats. If you're holding a reservation in these circumstances you are entitled to your seat.

We took elderly relatives to the station, and my daughter got onto the train to help them find their seat. At the reserved seats someone was in them and my daughter politely said they'd been reserved, to which the person asked for proof as no tickets in the back of the seats. When her aunt got the ticket out, wrong carriage! My daughter was furious!

If the reservations had been cancelled, the couple were in the right. It's frustrating, but when the reservations are cancelled, it's every person for themselves.

If the reservations were in force, the couple were in the wrong. It's that simple.

The couple should have reserved their own seats or used unreserved seats rather then stealing someone’s reserved seats.

There were no seat reservations. The train company had cancelled them all.

When trains are cancelled train companies very often cancel reservations on the next available service, which then becomes a free for all. A reservation never has been the same as a guaranteed seat.

@tachycardigan

They should have reserved seats if they needed them so badly.

Who is to say that the cuckoos in someone else's seats have not removed the reservations anyway?

They'd have had to remove the reservation ticket from every seat on the train in that case. I travel long distance on LNER every month and occasionally the reservations are cancelled because of a previous cancelled train, or sometimes a train with a different layout has to be brought into service. In those cases it's first come first served. You know if reservations are cancelled because there are no reservations at all, anywhere, sticking up from the backs of the seats.

She took against them as they acted like selfish knobs 🙄

I've sometimes booked tickets but it won't let me book a seat. There's a train I use regularly which has no reservations.

They didn’t. There were no seat reservations. It was first come, first served. The couple were on the train before the mum and kids got on.