No call for immoral schemes
Regarding the ‘Advance on the day’ scheme being extended (The
Fare Dealer, RAIL 827), Barry Doe’s statement that “I think this scheme is commercially immoral” struck me as a just condemnation.
Under the system, a passenger is sold a journey but not a seat on a train. But then that occupied seat is effectively sold again by later reservation to a second passenger.
It seems such a sharp and questionable (indeed, “immoral”) scheme, might it not be referred to
Which? for investigation, if not to an appropriate consumer protection body?
Train company motives seem opaque, apart from a prejudice against walk-on passengers.
Are they seeking to move to an all-reserved seat system, like airlines? Those systems are notoriously not immune to over-booking - witness the recent fracas on United Airlines, where staff were put into seats already occupied by paying passengers.
I avoid using CrossCountry trains where possible (although Leeds to Birmingham is unavoidable), and I have not been the subject of the kind of incident Barry describes.
I have talked to some XC conductors about the scheme, discovering them to be opposed to it. No wonder - they are, after all, left to police the system on board their trains. It’s they who have to cope with understandably angry passengers who are either being displaced (the Edinburgh-Plymouth passenger disturbed at Derby, for example) or who find their (later) reserved seat already occupied by a passenger who refuses to give it up. Docile behaviour is no longer the norm.
It’s difficult to see who gains or profits by such a disgraceful scheme. Only if the train company were to have live information as to which seats were occupied at the time the later reservation was being made, and so avoiding them, would it reasonably work.
XC is the only company using this system, but Barry states that Virgin Trains East Coast proposes to introduce it. Northern (like XC an Arriva company) has also stated that it intends to use it on its prospective Connect network. Try claiming a later reserved seat to Leeds at Huddersfield or Halifax at 1600 on a Friday… Richard Tinker, Leeds