Firstly, in serious disruption you'd hope that staff would have been a bit more flexible.
Secondly. Why would you ask permission if you're going to disregard a no? Surely you either just get on, or ask and take the answer. Asking a question where you're only prepared to receive a yes seems a bit off to me.
That was a one-off event.
1) The train model that pulled in was something I had already given up on travelling on.
2) Had something happened to my original train, I would have missed an advance single split connection at Kings Cross and then another on further up the ECML
3) I was clearly told that I could travel on it as long as I had a bike reservation for it by station staff (which was contradicted by people at the ticket office and Twitter). So, I had conflicting advice. Being a Voyager made it easy to take my bike aboard regardless.
A significant flaw in the railway's policies surrounding Advance tickets in particular is certainly that they expect you to be delayed and claim compensation rather than providing any means to mitigate the delay. It's one reason I very rarely use Advances, as most of the time I'd rather arrive at the time I wanted to arrive (by leaving earlier) than claim any compensation.
It's a very strange policy as it costs them a fortune paying out.
Herein lies the problem. Not only do they not want you to save them paying out 100% Delay Repay, but if you do they'll try to extort an Anytime Single or a settlement out of you or even prosecute!
It's a downright bizarre way to run a business.
Avanti has been caught blatantly and falsely lying about their ticket acceptance in the past. Such as an example in late May when they said I cannot use Crosscountry to go Lancaster-Birmingham, despite Crosscountry (the would be train operator) telling me I could. And I had to pressure them to return me the money because my trains were so delayed as well after they refused to do so by giving a weird reason. One could only hope that a company with a lot of attractive girls working as station staff would have been run better.
Totally and utterly disagree. When an Advance is purchased, what I am purchasing is a journey departing at time X and arriving at time Y. My part of the deal is that I make sure I arrive sufficiently in advance of time X to get on the train. The railway's part is to get me to the other end by time Y.
If the railway is unable to deliver both of those things, it should allow me to choose whether I prefer to still depart at time X, or whether I prefer to depart earlier so as to arrive at time Y. That is only reasonable, even if the ticket was completely free of charge.
Interestingly the last time I was in severe disruption using an Advance (I do occasionally, though I prefer not to) Avanti did permit me that (I travelled an hour earlier and arrived on time, meaning no Delay Repay claim - so cheaper for Avanti and better for me!) - but it really shouldn't be down to individual staff on the day.
Ah. So it seems either I was lied to by the Twitter team (would not be surprised, they have done so in the past) or you got lucky with a human rather than an android programmed to follow draconian regulations to the punctuation mark.
For the above to make sense, presumably your train wasn’t cancelled but delayed, in which case the correct thing to do would have been to join that train and claim delay repay, quite possibly resulting in a free journey. Presumably there was also ticket acceptance in place with Chiltern.
By all means ask permission to join an earlier train but, by ignoring what you’ve been told by staff, you run the risk of getting into hot water (up to and including prosecution) if revenue suddenly appear or you encounter a TM who is a stickler.
On the contrary, surely your second sentence demonstrates why the system has been designed as described in your first? Advances are cheap, much less flexible tickets. If that isn’t enforced there’s no incentive to buy more expensive more flexible tickets.
TMs where I work report big issues with people holding advance tickets expecting to board any train at their convenience, often not due to disruption but because their plans have changed, and often becoming shirty when told “no”. Sadly this is often because a favour they’ve been done in the past is now seen as an inalienable right.
It might well cost more overall in lost revenue if nobody bought anything other than advances on the basis they can expect them to be treated as fully flexible tickets.
I had a split ticket. And two types of staff were giving me contradicting advice about boarding that train. Next time I will be using an audio recorder hidden in my pocket when a situation like this arises again and encourage a call to the police if someone starts acting out about it on the train. And, with train fares going through the roof (it costs me less to go Coventry-Peterborough via Avanti and LNER than Crosscountry), no wonder people do that. I am not a fan of fare evasion (In Soviet terms I root for the hedgehogs ("ezhi"-conductors) rather than the hares ("zaitsi"- fare dodgers), but I here was motivated to listen to the advice I liked because of the possible results of me missing the onward connection.
To summarize, I don't take such events lightly. I would have happily been delayed as long as possible had I not had that connection to make. And when staff either lie to me or issue blatantly contradicting advice, what am I supposed to listen to?
