Any guesses for what chaos awaits us on this train?
Edit to add: This is not the ticket, it was printed alongside the actual ticket, after asking for seating preferences.
I’m not familiar with the ticketing system, but I think that it’d be reasonable for the ticket to simply be used to ensure that there is a seat somewhere, but not a specific seat.
If you go to a restaurant and reserve a table, the table doesn’t need to be a specific one…just means that the restaurant will make sure that one is open.
This ticket is odd by UK standards, and the arrangement you describe isn’t the norm. These seat reservation tickets normally specify a particular seat
Every east-midlands train I’ve been on has had to cancel specific seat reservations when I got on anyway. I think they just constantly overbook or something.
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Great western railway operates like this, offering you a “mystery seat” regardless of whether they’ve sold 120% of the seats in the train.
I am very familiar with this ticketing system, and if you don’t have a specific seat reserved, you’ll be very lucky to find a seat unless you’re getting on at the beginning of the train’s journey.
It means you can sit anywhere you want and you’re not stuck in an assigned seat.
You get on the train early you can have any seat you want.
This seems like the exact opposite of infuriating.Then why do you also need this piece of paper that doesn’t even seem to function as a ticket?
My money is on it being part of the ticketing computer’s programming.
They only issue as many tickets as seats. They just don’t tell you what seat to take.
They only issue as many tickets as seats
That’s… optimistic?
That’s in fact absolutely false.
Read the full text. This, despite appearances, is not in itself a ticket.
Read their full comment. They never argued otherwise
The only way to understand their comment is that they think it’s a ticket that they only printed as many as they have seats. Otherwise its a non sequitur as it doesn’t explain the purpose of printing a second slip that says you don’t have an assigned seat.
Very, very incorrect. You’ll very likely be standing with this scenario. No seat number? No seat, unless you’re very very lucky, or you happen to be getting on at the train start station and it’s there very early and so are you.
Any seat you want
Provided that someone doesn’t have a specific seat booked.
In my experience it should be called general seating or something along those lines if it isn’t for a specific reserved seat.
It means they are essentially guaranteeing you that the seats are not oversold. There will definitely be a seat for you somewhere on the train - that’s all this is saying. It’s capacity management. Have you not used regional rail before?
No, they still sell tickets without reservations and anytime tickets without limit. Your only guarantee is a numbered seat that you can claim. This has no such thing.
Is there though? I’ve never been unable to buy an Any Time ticket on the day because a train is full.
I’ve only been unable to board a train a handful of times, and that was because people were rammed in like the Black Hole of Calcutta before the train even arrived.
Having used plenty of EMR services before I’m counting down the days until they’re renationalised…
You see, you know how to take the reservation, you just don’t know how to hold the reservation. And that’s really the most important part of the reservation: the holding.
Fairly common in Germany. Trains can be so full often times that people are standing butt to belly in the aisles.
In the UK where this ticket is from, if you buy a ticket from the machine in the station it will spit it out in potentially multiple parts (because one isn’t enough space for all the information)
You can see this ticket says “Valid only with Travel Ticket”, which means this is the second of two parts. The “Travel Ticket” (not pictured) is the one that actually allows you to travel on the train, and the seat reservation part (pictured) is the one that gives you a seat.
Normally the machine only gives what you need, so if there is no seat reservation you’ll get the travel ticket only.
So the mystery isn’t that there is no reserved seat, but that because there is no seat, this ticket doesn’t even need to exist. The machine could have just not printed this ticket at all.
I suspect it’s an “Advance” reduced fare ticket, which is only ever valid with a seat reservation, but either the seat was over specified (ticking all three of facing forwards, table seat, near the entrance, for example), or the train company continued to issue “Advance” tickets even after all the reservable seats are gone, which you could count as a dick move, or you could interpret as allowing more people to buy tickets at the reduced fare.
It could be that that was one of the least overcrowded trains scheduled on a day that’s expected to be very overcrowded indeed, and they’re trying to spread the no standing room pain across as many trains as possible. It’s certainly cheaper than putting on additional services.
Thanks for the clarification!
So many people in the comments don’t get that having something called a seat reservation which doesn’t literally reserve a seat is mildly infuriating.
I think people answering these comments are from other countries that don’t understand that on a train from Reading to London in rush hour, there might be 60 seats and 80 passengers per carriage. 20 of these pax standing despite their ticket that said “Feel free to sit on any free seat you happen to find!”
I’m reading some of these replies thinking I’m getting gaslighted by railway operator employees. Unless they actually sell “absolutely no sitting” tickets and the conductors fine abusers, this ticket makes no sense.
It just says no “specific” seat reserved but you’ll have a seat reserved, you just don’t know which one. It’s good if you can get there early and get a window seat.
That’s a good example of not understanding, thanks!
Southwest Airlines does their ticketing a similar way. You get assigned a boarding number but not a seat. So if you check in early you get a better boarding spot and hence a get to pick your seat. Does this mean there are more tickets issues than the available seats? No. Sightseeing cruises don’t have seat numbers either, you get there early and grab a good spot. This might not be common to people and hence they are mildly infuriated. The other option is paying extra to get a reserved seat which I’m sure will be infuriating because the person next to you paid a cheaper price.
Soithwest has open seating which is accessible through a ticket. It does not have seat reservations or assigned seating, or at least it hasn’t in the past but will apparently will start having seat reservations in the near future.
I know phrasing has stupid nuances in different contexts but there are differences between a reserved seat, reserved seating, reserving a table, etc. and while table reservations often mean first available seat reservations generally include assigned seats in my and the OPs experience.
Okay, understandable. If we are just talking trains, Amtrak trains do the same and don’t issue seat numbers so in my experience the train is never crowded and every one gets a window seat which is preferred by many here rather than being seated next to a stranger.
+1. “oh you’ll surely be good if you are early, the train can’t possibly already be overcrowded when it arrives”
It can’t be overcrowded if the ticketing system works as it is supposed to. They can’t book 75 people for a train which can only seat 50.
They can’t book 75 people for a train which can only seat 50
The official statistics lists how frequently that occurs.
Okay. I’m not from the UK so my comment is irrelevant!
Now you have to find out who is sitting without a reservation!
Same thing as general admission at a concert, but on a train.
Everyone crams to the front to get there faster?
“Specific.” It’s general admission. Ideally, they would only sell as many seat reservations as there are seats available in whatever cars are in the “seat pool.”
I don’t see a problem here.
I suppose it’s irritating that you pay (a likely large amount of money as it’s probably a UK ticket) for a ticket with a seat reservation, the least they could do is actually assign you a seat.
If it’s a free for all and - as you likely correctly say - they don’t oversell the number of tickets against the number of seats, then the reservation card of the ticket is a little pointless really.
It’s likely to differentiate between the general admission cars and the cars that do have assigned (and probably more comfortable) seats.
No, only individual seats are reserved. There’s no “reservations only” carriage, but there are carriages that are more or less reserved. Off the top of my head, I think coach B is often very close to, but never actually fully reserved, whereas D has only a minority of awards reserved.
They absolutely oversell on a regular basis on UK train.
Do you have a reference for this?
I’m not questioning that it happens - it’s a common thing in high volume hotels or high value airline routes after all - but I’d be interested in what sort of margins they oversell at.
That said, most of the documents would likely be commercially sensitive I should imagine.
I’ve travelled on hundreds and hundreds of trains in the UK. On busy services, unless you’re getting on at the start, if you don’t have a specific seat reserved, you will be standing. This is normal. I don’t have a source for that claim, I just have many years of experience.
There’s a plausibility gap on capping ticket sales for trains. Why on earth would they stop selling “anytime” tickets? They’re really expensive and a train with plenty of people standing costs the company no more but earns them a great deal.
What’s unusual here is that this looks like it came with an “advance” ticket, which is cheaper, limited in number, only available in advance, and is required to come with a reserved seat, but they’ve clearly oversold even them.
You’ve reserved A seat.
Except you haven’t, that’s the point.
If you don’t get to the train early, you have to stand. That’s how British trains work. People who get to the train will see many seats unreserved saying “Seat Available” on the overhead sign, regardless of whether they’ve reserved a seat.
So someone who hasn’t clicked “reserve a seat” on the booking process might sit on that, while you stand in the hallway.
The ticket literally means “sorry, you don’t have a seat assigned”.
But you are permitted to sit. Just the seat you find is not defined.
Everyone is permitted to sit, except if the seat is reserved for someone else who has a normal seat reservation ticket which specifies the coach and seat number.
Exactly
Yes, but which one?
Who cares? Some airlines do this too. You just get a boarding group, and pick your own seat
Do they still give you a boarding pass, and a seperate piece of paper stating that you have a reservation, but does not in itself act as a reciept nor boarding pass?
Also, that example is bad to begin with, because airlines will oversell their planes ALL THE TIME. Spirit and Fronteer literally try to oversell every single plane on purpose. The idea being that they can try to convince you to get reimbursed with Fronteer bucks. A fictional currency that is only good within their company and has no outside real world value. Then they hope that you take it, and then later that currency expires. Meaning in the end you paid for an airline ticket that you never used and have no recoarse to get refunded.
And a lot of people hate that process and prefer to be able to book a specific seat.
Not really infuriating at all.
Think of it like an airline. You have a reserved seat, but it isn’t actually allocated until you check in .
In the UK you can get on a train without booking a ticket for that specific train, for example an open return or just a day pass. The train company has no idea how many seats will be taken or how many people will get on the train. So say it’s a 10 carriage train. Every seat is taken by someone, reserved or unreserved, and theres not a bit of standing room anywhere (this is very common). Which person sat on a reserved red light indicator seat should you kick out? And how do you know they didn’t reserve that seat specifically before you do that? Or do you kick someone out of a green lit non-reserved seat, with thier proof that the seat is not reserved and they are allowed to sit there, and your proof that you dont even have that seat reserved. It will also be the old people and small children sat down, and you won’t really be popular if you make them stand. Yeah you’re not sitting if you have this ticket. You’ll likely be stood by the entrance door for 3 hours instead. This seat reservation ticket may as well say, “sorry no seat today”, and it’s definitely infuriating to lean that you will be standing for your journey when you’ve payed full price for a seat, maybe £40 depending where.
Is that how airlines work where you are? It’d be wild for me to not pick my seat
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Seems reasonable enough to me if you bought a ticket for a train which doesn’t have assigned seating, which is pretty common. Just choose your seat as you board the same way you would with a bus.
Yeah but why even give you the checkbox/option for reserving a seat, only to tell you that you might actually be standing if the train is full or you don’t arrive early enough?
I suspect the sales website can’t actually reserve seats itself, but just passes along the request to some other system, which enters “LOL, NO!” in that field for a train that was long-since fully booked.
Not common in the UK where this seat reservation ticket is from.
Certain tickets in German rail have similar reservations. There are numerous seats kept free in the train for those who have a reservation - simply find one of these seats and sit down there. Always worked fine for me.
Heavenly: If there are few people then you can sit anywhere.
Hell: If there are a lot of people then you might not be able to board the train.
My guess is that it printed this “null” reservation slip to let you know that the reservation had failed, because otherwise people would think that the printer wasn’t working? It prints the ticket(s), then the reservation(s), then the receipt listing how many things were printed.
I’m guessing that they have limited seats and are trying to make sure no one has to stand on the train by limiting the number of reservations, even if which seat to sit in is not assigned. In Japan, bullet trains and some express services require extra payment with your ticket or pre-booking, for either non-reserved or reserved class.
This is the UK. The train will be heaving, and those without a specific seat number reserved will likely have to stand unless they’re getting on at the first station and are early on to the train.
