Train seat reservations

[littlebilliie]

That if you booked a seat it’s yours?

Haha love this response

Had you reserved all the seats around a table? Just because you're travelling as a family, you don't "need" a table - unless you reserved all seats.

If you did, then the other passengers had no leg to stand on [bad pun apologies].

Given the complete lack of information in the ops post a smart arse answer was well deserved...if they'd posted the later follow up rather than drip feed the post and my response would have been completely different

I know exactly how you feel.

When this happens, the seat they find is usually in first class so the wronged passenger gets the last laugh.

What the heck is wrong with some people? Just apologise and move for goodness sake. They don’t seem to have to ability to recognise that them taking up a reserved seat will likely have a knock on effect if you then take another person’s seat and so on and so forth.

I would be very surprised if the train company reserved three seats around one table, and one elsewhere, for a party of four, tbh...

They might, if there were no tables left that were fully unreserved and there were one or more tables where a solo traveller had reserved and requested a table seat (as is their right). In which case the maximum number of table-seat spaces anywhere on the train would be 3, and if a group of 4 makes a booking and requests table seats they would almost certainly be assigned 3 seats together and one elsewhere.

They could then try to negotiate with the holder of the 4th seat at their table to swap with their stranded group member but that person would have every right to refuse.

Not in my world. If they are in my seat they move (and I am small and older). Many years ago I got a train in Manchester with my mum, toddler and baby and four business men were in our seats. I asked them politely to move and they declined. So I handed one of them the baby and told him I would be back when I had found seats. They moved pretty quickly. If people refuse to move you can call the guard. In my experience these days, people just don’t seem to understand how the seating works. They are often in the wrong carriage, never mind the wrong seats.

Then you find someone official on the train and get them involved. Personally I’d make a huge stink and wait until they moved. I’ve booked and paid, therefore that’s my seat.

I have traveled on a number of trains over the past year or so. Mostly Nottingham to airports, I can’t recall the last time I have seen reservation system working. I used to often get first class but gave up when a train was cancelled and the replacement train was second class only (train to Norwich, I’m looking at you).

And if that was the case here, pretty sure op would not have said that the seat the woman was in was booked for them...

You know they can’t physically remove them though right? If they still refuse you’re still left without a seat.

If someone sits if your plane seat there’s no guarantee they’ll be moved from that either. The difference is planes aren’t generally overbooked like trains so you’ll just get given a seat elsewhere. But even if you book a particular seat on a plane there’s no guarantee you’ll get that particular seat.

One another thing I hate about trains is they often assign you a priority seat when you didn’t request one. I just booked a standard seat and when I arrived it was a priority seat and a disabled person was in it and they said they needed it. The guard couldn’t find me any other seats so I had to sit on the floor for 3 hours. (I could not stand for 3 hours as a have back issues).

Part of the problemon trains is you can reserve a seat when the train is already in service... so the seat a person thought was available when they sat in it becomes unavailable halfway through their journey.

Plus people dont see the tiny screens... or get a split ticket and dont realise its a different seat... or misread the numbers...

Or just think they are more important.

Happened to me once - some woman and her companion was sitting in our seats. When we politely explained she said 'I'll have to see if any other seats are free before I move'. No mate, I booked those seats.

I’ve turfed dozens of people out of my prebooked seats over the years, a few have protested with a feeble excuse but I just say, not all disabilities are visible and leave it hanging, only once did I have to call the guard to help, I’d booked 4 around a table for my family and two lads refused to move, the guard turfed them out at Luton as they didn’t even have valid tickets

It's where you can park wheelchair users to stay for when the booked help at a station isn't there and they can't get off the train.

Buzzwords to try and make a point! I am physically disabled i book long distance train seats, those people could have done the same, you did nothing wrong.

Just want to clarify I don't think Ableist is an actual buzzword, just the misuse of.

Exactly this ⬆️
It is poor behaviour to sit in a seat someone else has reserved. But it’s perfectly possible for it to be dealt with without incident. In this situation I have smiled nicely and pointed out my ticket with the seat number on it.

On the rare occasions the person has still refused to move, I’ve just spoken with the guard / ticket collector and said, ‘There seems to be some confusion, I believe I have this seat booked’ and gestured politely to the person sitting in it.

If there had ever been no member of train staff there, I’d have stood right next to the seat, staring at them and smiling politely until they moved. 🙂 Sometimes I think people just want to see what they can get away with - like a dominance thing.

On trains, people have always moved without complaint when I’ve politely and apologetically pointed out that I’ve reserved the seats they’re in.

However, I did have an issue on a flight last year. We boarded, to discover someone in our seats. I assumed I’d got confused, triple checked our boarding cards, and politely pointed out that they were in our seats. I was met with a response that they knew, but that they wanted window seats rather than the ones they’d been allocated. “We told the airline we wanted a window”. They refused to move again. At this point, cabin crew came as they could see the aisle was blocked. They told me I had to sit where I booked. I explained that was precisely what we were trying to do and showed our boarding cards. Even cabin crew were confused why the others had decided they could sit in our seats. Eventually, they did get the others to move but it was one of more bizarre experiences on a plane I’ve had. Some people are ridiculous.

A wheelchair user may not be able to "summon" the guard. Unless they carry an air horn for attention. Which I've seen done, but it's regarded as poor form.

I had a situation where I booked on the Avanti website and someone else had booked on Trainline for the same seat. Luckily I got there first. She rather arrogantly asked me to move: I refused to leave, obviously, as I was sat in the seat I booked. She got the train manager and was eventually found another seat in the carriage with much huffing and puffing and glaring at me, as if I had done it deliberately.

One time, a massive group of foreign students had taken all the booked seats. The train manager moved me and others to first class, we could not physically move down the aisle to ask them to move.

Yes and then it causes a load of arguments as if to the reservations exist or not and bad communication.

I also used to get pretty annoyed when I'd paid thousands on a season ticket to commute to London, and on my peak time train home it was often taken up full of people going all the way to Cornwall or somewhere, who'd paid a fraction of the cost I was paying per day. I would have appreciated a seat for the first 30 minutes and then would have gladly handed it over!