A little while back, I ventured that those booking train tickets should considering if they are really going to use whatever seat reservation they might have made and whether it was a waste of time in the first place. Since then, National Express East Coast have done their bit to force rethinks on the subject of seat reservation by announcing plans to charge for them (£2.50 single and £5 return). It’s a controversial move, particularly given the size of fare increases in the last few years, and some of complained publicly about the development. However, if it improves apparent seat availability for hop-on passengers, that may not be such a bad thing and its introduction starts on Sunday.
Category Archives: Booking
Why reserve a seat if unsure of your time of travel?
Sadly, those insulting thetrainline.com ads have reappeared. Personally, I like the flexibility of just turning up at a train station, buying a ticket for my journey and going on my way. In fact, I like that idea so much that I am willing to pay for it most of the time (saying that, when the cost passes £60, savings are often sought). Being called an idiot for wanting to things in this way is certainly not something that I appreciate and I can next to guarantee that the said company will not be getting my custom, at least not directly.
Apart from those appalling posters, another thing that brings the whole matter of Internet bookings to mind is my travelling on a train south from Aviemore a few weeks back. Many seats were reserved but most of these weren’t occupied. That may have been just as well for sake of travelling comfort but it prompted the thought in my mind as to whether those reservations were a “just in case” measure. The next step in musings has me wondering if a world where there was more more frugality in the booking of seats might be a better one. However, there is also the possibility that a decline in seat booking would result in less frequent services and shorter trains, something that could increase seat reservations and pop things back where they were before anyway. It all makes a seat reservation less useful than it ought to be. In reality, it is probably no bad thing to sit in such a spot until disturbed by the rightful occupant. After all, you only need to move away when asked. It may not make things user friendly for those reserving seats or be the sort of practice that is encouraged but it might be a minor irritation in the broad scheme of things.
While the railways still cut some slack and that is good when it comes to convenience, other modes of travel are far from being like this and I hope that the railways don’t follow suit. For one thing, they already compensate for a less than comprehensive express coach network in England that makes seat bookings a necessity. Wales now has its Trawscambria long distance bus network with Ireland and Scotland having none too shabby networks provided by Citylink, Ulsterbus and Bus Éireann. Airlines are run on a far tighter footing and you only need to note Ryanair’s closure of airport check in desks in favour of the online option and Aer Lingus’ passenger operated baggage check in facilities to see what I mean. They also overbook their aircraft which is not so nice but the expectation is that not everyone will make a flight. If the same sort of thinking started to pervade the railways, then that would be a very disappointing development.
Saying all of that, I don’t object to there being a need for bookings on services running at busy times. In fact, if you are tied to a train by an advance purchase ticket, then reserving a seat makes sense. For more flexible tickets (Off Peak and Anytime returns come to mind), the logic of that argument may not be so strong, hence my appeal to only reserve your place when you are absolutely certain of travelling. Yes, I realise that stuff happens but there’s no need to devalue the seat booking by not turning up because it was only done just in case.
Saving precious pennies II
I was recently pondering a trip to Cardiff and the standard Off-Peak return starting from Macclesfield kept coming to £57.90. This was rather more than I was expecting so my mind turned to the idea of re-booking or split ticketing. It might constrain my journey options (a good few good around by Birmingham) but doing the split at Shrewsbury does save money when doing so at Crewe costs even more. The Off-Peak Return from Macc to Shrewsbury comes to £18.80 while the same for Shrewsbury to Cardiff stands at £26.50 with the total cost coming to £45.30, not a staggering reduction but a step in the right direction and at a price that I feel it should be. I don’t know who is setting the prices but £12.60 is still quite a difference.
Saving precious pennies
I an mulling over a Christmas shopping trip to Edinburgh over the coming weekend (yes, I know that we are just after one) and decided to see if I could save on the £64 off-peak return fare by having a poke around the National Rail Enquiries website. It turns out that there is a way to manage the feat and a saving of around a third of the price is possible too without needing advance purchase tickets with their lock-in to specific train times. In fact, all that’s needed is a practice called rebooking where you get more than a single set of tickets for your journey and it’s valid so long as the train on which you are travelling actually stops at a station that is a destination for one set and a starting point for another. I have found that a set from my home station to Preston and from there to Edinburgh does the deed. The very nice part of all of this is that it can be done with off-peak return ticketing (the current incarnation of the old saver return), all walk on fares in other words. And there’s no need to resort to thetrainline.com with all their smugness and hubris either; well, I find their latest billboard campaign to be on the wrong side of insulting…
Why don’t they tell us things like this up front?
I have been booking some travel with National Express on the web today. However, I was initially that my preferred service was booked up (it looks as if it might have had something to do with my selecting an economy ticket instead of a standard one; they were both the same price anyway). Later on, I did manage that booking but the experience did highlight one thing: I was only told of unavailability when I tried to pay for the booking. It might have been better if the website was more dynamic in that it only showed you what was available rather than letting you find out several steps into the booking process.
The same annoyance affects web bookings on the Caledonian Sleeper services run by First ScotRail. Their Bargain Berth offerings bring another idea to mind. It would be a great help if availability could be seen at a glance rather than having to plough through several steps to meet dead ends as is the current way of working.
All in all, train and bus companies could learn from the likes of Aer Lingus who do present their fares in a far more friendly manner with the cheapest fare any single day displayed in a calender-esque table. It is true to say that the tariffs shown may not be all-inclusive with charges for taxes, baggage and seat reservations in there but you do get a very quick view of when’s the least expensive time to travel. A lot of cross-fertilisation has occurred between the different modes of travel already and not always for the better; just travel in Virgin’s Pendolinos and contemplate a possible source of inspiration for the window designs. However, it would be good to see some best practice shared rather than having to endure a “Personal Trainer” on the National Rail website.
