EastCoast Trains withholding tickets!

marsolen

Hi all, could do with some urgent advice here please!

A couple of friends of mine, M and A, have booked tickets to travel with East Coast trains from London to Edinburgh in a few days time. The tickets are booked on M's card and in her name for both of them. Unfortunately M's mother suffered a severe head injury and is currently seriously unwell in a Bulgarian hospital and of course M is with her. Anyone familiar with the East Coast trains collection service will know that the tickets booked cannot be collected without M's card, on which they were booked. She has contacted East Coast and tried to amend the delivery option to home delivery in the UK but they won't allow it.

This means that A is unable to collect her ticket either, which presents another problem: without it she cannot get to Edinburgh from where she flies back to mainland Europe a few days after.

This whole thing seems thoroughly unfair and unreasonable. The current plan is for me to go along with A, armed with a printout of the booking confirmation and a scanned copy of M's card, and attempt to persuade them to release the tickets. I don't hold out much hope however, especially having read online how unreasonable East Coast have been in other situations.

I would like to know if anyone can advise on any trick of the system that might allow us to be more sure of accessing the tickets that have been undisputably paid for. Can anyone advise on perhaps a way that we CAN change the delivery option? Or at least, a legal regulation that we could cite in attempting to persuade them to change the delivery option? Or perhaps adjusting the name in which the tickets are held, etc. I'm sure you get the gist.

Any help in this really would be very much appreciated! Thank you

Marsolen

Livingthedream

marsolen wrote: »

This whole thing seems thoroughly unfair and unreasonable.

It's to stop people from abusing the system and getting multiple tickets.

marsolen wrote: »

The current plan is for me to go along with A, armed with a printout of the booking confirmation and a scanned copy of M's card, and attempt to persuade them to release the tickets

Make sure it's an East Coast Station ie Edinburgh Waverley or London King Cross and give yourself plenty of time, it might work just depends on how good the retail services assistant is.

Only other option I can give is repost on here, I sure a member there might work for East Coast and have a better plan.

Owain_Moneysaver

marsolen wrote: »

This whole thing seems thoroughly unfair and unreasonable.

It's an anti-fraud measure to ensure that the tickets are only collected by someone with physical possession of the card.

Can M send the card back from Bulgaria by extra fast post?

marsolen

Livingthedream wrote: »

It's to stop people from abusing the system and getting multiple tickets.

I know and I do understand that, but surely they must have some way of knowing whether or not the tickets have been collected already. And to be completely unmoving in this sort of situation does seem somewhat churlish. Anyway, thanks for the link, will repost there. We'll also head to KX and hope for the best.

Thanks for the advice!

marsolen

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

Can M send the card back from Bulgaria by extra fast post?

Unfortunately I don't think it would get to us in time, it would also be rather expensive, from the looks of things, with no guarantees.

And I do understand the anti-fraud measures, but you'd think they could make secure exceptions in certain circumstances, but hey ho.

lammy82

If you've got the booking reference, try collecting them from the FastTicket machine using a different credit card. I don't want to get your hopes up but it's not always as strict as they make out.