Avanti First Class 'sold out'

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Indeed it is mad. Seatfrog should be selling distressed inventory, not getting a quota on every train for first dibs.

They stopped offering them on all but the first and last two or three trains of the day anyway. Have they reinstated them?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I have been refused anytime tickets from them (Euston ticket office) on the grounds of their TIS being unable to issue it as the only service it would be valid on (the 5:30 am departure for Glasgow the next day as it was) had "sold out". I went to a different london terminal and bought it without problem, without reservations on the avanti leg. When I travelled on the 5:30 am service (which was running) there was only 1 other passenger from euston (presumably the fact that it was made really hard to buy tickets didn't help loadings, Not that I would have expected the 5:30 am service to be busy in any case)

This wasn't the first case I have had issues at Euston ticket office, this instance did however make me decide to always plan to buy a ticket at another london terminal before heading to Euston - I've had too many bad experiences at that ticket office so now avoid it

In contrast, every other ticket office I've used has been really good in my experience

In future you can purchase this from the non planner based LNR TVMs down the 8-11 ramp at the bottom.

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

Is a further inference here that AWC have effectively sold part of the 1st class capacity on a merchant basis to Seatfrog? Ie. Seat Frog take the risk on volume/price, whereas AWC get a guaranteed price whether there is a pax or not. This arrangement is still fairly common in the business hotel sector, with hotels agreeing minimum prices they are prepared to let the agents sell the inventory for but avoid the hassle of selling it directly via their own reservations systems and hotels.

More particularly, are AWC trying to make the Seatfrog business fly, rather than stewarding their own?

This kind of seat reservation experience is just too complicated, made more so by the collapse of T-12 (remember that?).... Only the legendary fictional character, A P Herbert, could understand it and, in my experience, this set up leaves most ordinary members of the public ever more bemused than they were when they had the crazy idea of trying to book a premium travel expeience by rail in the first place!

Not even BA manages to create something this complicated (although doubtless they are working on it somewhere...!)

 

[RAPC]

Aren’t there usually only a couple of Seatfrog seats available? That’s not going to have a massive effect on availability of First Class.

There's a bit more gamification going on in the background. It looks like only a couple via the interface, but on most services they get to sell more than that.

They stopped offering them on all but the first and last two or three trains of the day anyway. Have they reinstated them?

Yes. Just checked for a few dates and I can pick pretty much any scheduled train for my normal journey to London.

 

[CyrusWuff]

Oscar is correct that it's an accreditation requirement if you do journey planning.

It sounds like there's widespread non-compliance. I'm not sure how long TIS suppliers have to implement this specific piece.

Given there are still accredited TIS using v5 print formats, despite v6 being mandatory since just after Easter this year, I'd suggest that some parts of accreditation are being treated more as guidelines than hard and fast rules.

But that's veering off-topic for this thread.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Given there are still accredited TIS using v5 print formats, despite v6 being mandatory since just after Easter this year, I'd suggest that some parts of accreditation are being treated more as guidelines than hard and fast rules.

But that's veering off-topic for this thread.

Funny I was just talking to one of those suppliers this week and pointing out their shortcomings

 

[Deerfold]

I think the other issue is that even if you buy a walkup from a website, I don't know of any site that won't collect an email, and almost all by now should correctly notify of service changes from sourced the national system. And you can buy a walkup from a (non-journey planner) TVM without supplying contact details, unaffected by this. So all that this really does successfully is block people buying tickets at a journey planner TVM with no way to contact them about changes.

LNER can't even always manage to tell me when my LNER train is p-coded.