The (apparent?) short life of Avanti buy at seat

[800001]

On LNER the staff will walk miles up and down the train (on a 9 car Azuma) delivering peoples order at seat goodies. I can see why the Avanti staff are not very keen on the idea.

Talk to the staff on lner doing the deliveries to seats and they really enjoy it.

 

[Class83]

It wasn’t always like that. I (very vaguely) remember some cracking journeys in the 2000s from Glasgow to Euston that involved 2 meals and a shedload of complimentary beers. I think my record was a Glasgow to New Street journey during the Lamington diversion, food & drink on each of the Voyager to Carlisle & the Pendolinos to Preston and then Birmingham.

They are generally ok at doing one round from the departure station, it's after that and for passengers boarding at intermediate stations I've found the service worse. You may have inadvertantly hit the jackpot of having 3 departures on one journed. Whereas East Coast seem to proactively look for passengers who've just boarded.

This was why the old restaurant car system was better in my view. You paid for what you wanted, and what you got was very good quality and provided in fairly generous quantities. On WCML you have to go back to BR days to recall that, on ECML to GNER. On GWR the residual Pullman dining gives a sense of it. Worth every penny in my view.

I'd support this, replace First Class with Standard Premium throughout. £4-5 for a beer or glass of wine, £10 for a cooked breakfast, 10% commission to the staff, people only pay for what they want and staff are incentivised to keep the service going.

 

[Parallel]

Have been on a few Avanti services over the last week and none of them had the service working, and visiting https://avantimedia.uk/ was always acting as if you were not using the onboard wifi. Something is broken somewhere.

I used an Avanti service yesterday, the WiFi was working how I expected but no at seat delivery service due to not enough staff.

 

[Carlisle]

I love the idea, but it really should be done not to require the wifi.

Is there another straightforward & fail safe way to confirm what train your actually on?
The Wetherspoons app doesn’t require Wi-Fi but needs the name of the pub your in.

 

[miami]

Is there another straightforward & fail safe way to confirm what train your actually on?

The QR Code could encode the train (coach) name and seat number

 

[Bletchleyite]

Is there another straightforward & fail safe way to confirm what train your actually on?

That the QR code on the back of the seat redirects you to https://avantibuyonboard.com/390123/A/45, for example (unit number, coach, seat).

 

[XAM2175]

The QR Code could encode the train (coach) name and seat number

That the QR code on the back of the seat redirects you to https://avantibuyonboard.com/390123/A/45, for example (unit number, coach, seat).

At the cost, however, of needing a unique sticker for every single seat on every single train. A reasonable compromise could be to have unit and vehicle numbers encoded, with the passenger left to enter their own seat number.

 

[Carlisle]

At the cost, however, of needing a unique sticker for every single seat on every single train. A reasonable compromise could be to have unit and vehicle numbers encoded, with the passenger left to enter their own seat number.

Yes, perhaps they could or already are incorporating unique stickers in their refurbishment plans.

 

[py_megapixel]

That the QR code on the back of the seat redirects you to https://avantibuyonboard.com/390123/A/45, for example (unit number, coach, seat).

The problem with that, as I mentioned in another thread, is that people will not realise that the information is encoded in this way and may therefore save the URL somewhere and keep trying to use it on different trains, ordering food in the wrong place.

I think a better solution would be for Avanti to buy a short, easy-to-type domain name which people enter manually, and then have the user scan a code encoding their seat number etc in the browser.

 

[philthetube]

I'd support this, replace First Class with Standard Premium throughout. £4-5 for a beer or glass of wine, £10 for a cooked breakfast, 10% commission to the staff, people only pay for what they want and staff are incentivised to keep the service going.

10% to staff on all trolley duties would greatly improve service, but great idea for standard premium

 

[Facing Back]

“not available” on a sunday evening service to Euston

 

[RAPC]

Used the service a few times recently and it was very good. Usually delivered within 10 mins of the order and no problems. These have been on Preston to London and return services in the past month in Standard Premium.