Transport User Voice September 2024 – Helping passengers
04 September 2024
Seating and assistance confusion
Mr and Mrs L bought first class advance tickets with reserved seats at Market Harborough station to travel from Edinburgh to Long Eaton. They also booked Passenger Assistance, and at Edinburgh station they used the first-class lounge and were given help onto the train. When Mr L went to the buffet car to enquire as to why no refreshments had been provided, it seems that while sitting in the first-class lounge at Edinburgh their seats were taken by someone else – and they had mistakenly been seated in standard class.
The train manager was contacted, and it was suggested they could move seats, unfortunately no assistance was offered and due to Mrs L’s medical and mobility issues, and a large suitcase this would have proved difficult. Mr L contacted Avanti and the other train companies involved to complain but was unable to get a satisfactory response.
LNER could not confirm that it was a member of their staff who had helped the Mr and Mrs L and provided an email address of the Edinburgh Waverley station manager, who spoke to a member of staff who remembered helping Mr and Mrs L. However, the staff member did not recall seating Mr and Mrs L in seats for which they hadn’t paid and advised that some passengers confuse the mobility hub for the first-class lounge at Edinburgh.
Transport Focus raised this case with Avanti and as a result it offered to refund Mr and Mrs L £81.40, the difference between first and standard class tickets, which they have accepted. The station manager also advised that Avanti are trialing a new industry wide seat reservation system. They also acknowledged a known problem where journeys are made up of more than one leg (as happened with this journey). In these cases, the wrong seats are sometimes given, or tickets are seen as unavailable on some websites. This is being investigated by the relevant teams at Avanti.
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