On 9/15/2015 9:18 AM, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 08:50:37 on Tue, 15 Sep
2015, Someone Somewhere remarked:

I've given up counting the number of times I've got on a FGW train at
Paddington on a full price walk up fare to be greeted by a sea of
fluttering reservation tickets that are rarely taken up

That's because most online booking sites seduce people into making a
seat reservation for walk-up tickets, and when their plans change
there's no mechanism to cancel the reservation (not that most people
would bother anyway).

Indeed - it would be so much better if they charged a token amount for a
seat reservation to make people think about it.


leaving me scrabbling to find a seat.

Look at the tickets - they won't all be for journeys starting at
Paddington. Or just grab any seat and be prepared to move if asked.

Yeah - I know - I just dislike holding up the rampaging hordes of
boarders whilst I squint at each ticket.

It gets even more amusing when they run out of time to put the slips out
- does it become a free for all or is it a lottery if you sit down and
someone turns up and says it's their seat? (on a recent trip it started
as train manager asking people to be nice and do the latter before
rapidly changing his mind and saying the former should be assumed)