Paulatic wrote: ↑25 Jan 2023, 7:22pm
Sweep wrote: ↑25 Jan 2023, 5:50pm
Paulatic wrote: ↑25 Jan 2023, 4:03pm
I’ve just booked Preston to Euston tomorrow afternoon £37.30 complete with bike reservation. Took less than five minutes and if I’d continued with the transaction the tickets would be sitting in my Wallet or I could choose to print them out at the station.
This is consistently my experience with booking trains with bike reservation when needed.
That was using Avanti site reserving a bike space wasn’t , or I couldn’t find, available on Northern site. Probably because there’s no need to book a bike on Northern?
To be clear, as I said - single journey - all on Avanti - none of the journey at all was on a northern train.
None of the booking was attempted online on a Northern Rail website.
I was simply pointing out that the member of staff at the ticket office I used was probably under Northern - member of staff and ticket office.
I hope your tickets including bike reservation printed out OK at the station.
I assure you that it hasn't always happened with me and ticket station staff have confirmed to me more than once that this screw-up is far from uncommon.
Including a nice woman at Preston station.
(from which Avanti runs of course)
hence, see above, my latter day preference to book at a ticket office, see tickets including bike reservation before I hand over dosh/complete the booking.
hence, see above, my question about pricing online/at booking office.
Yes I hear and understand what you are saying.
I just question why you put yourself to all this trouble when it’s so simple to diy online.
I used to pick up a real ticket at the station, Lockerbie , but the office had to be open. Now it’s so easy to have it on your phone.
>>Took less than five minutes and if I’d continued with the transaction the tickets would be sitting in my Wallet or I could choose to print them out at the station.
re booking onlne and then printing at station, see my original post. Not an option due to screw-ups in the past. I speak from experience and know that the problems are not rare - after speaking to station staff. It's the bike reservation print-out that can be a problem. If this could be relied on (as it can for the person bit of the ticket - I would be more than happy to do this. Have done many times when no bike involved.
Re the app, you mean an Avanti app?
Does it require an internet connection to display the ticket/s including bike reservation or do you have a copy/image of the ticket/s which you can copy to other devices?
I ask as I know apps can misbehave - and also of course companies like to use them as they give them lots of marketing info/allow them to differential price.
Best online booking system I know is London Northwestern - book online - you get the tickets as a PDF for your device/s- simples - needs no special app though an ill-informed LNWestern train staff member did once try to insist that I show him my ticket on an app. Eventually he accepted my PDF - on a device.
I assure you that I am no luddite - have been using the internet and remote datacomms since before many many people realised it was a thing.
Anyway, back to simple original question - is it the case that ticket office staff should be able to sell you the same tickets at the same price as you can get online.
(Barring of course special special individual train company promo offers - which was definitely NOT the case with this booking)