No seat booking facility on Trans Pennine Express

confused_59

I recently booked a First Class Airport Advance Single from Manchester Airport to Edinburgh. I couldn’t book a seat at the time I booked the train and assumed this was a glitch on the website and contacted TPE about this.

I received this reply:

Thank you for contacting TransPennine Express regarding your seat reservation, I was sorry to learn of the circumstances that prompted you to get in touch.

I can confirm that you are booked on a counted place service, a counted place service is where you book on to a train but not given a specific seat. Not all of our classes of reservable trains have the facilities on board for either physical paper labels or electronic onboard systems. It also allows us to sell Advance Purchase tickets as the services have to be reservable for the ticket to be retailed.

As there is no indication for the seat, this means you may sit in any available seat on the service and on this occasion we are unable to book a specific seat for your journey.

Once again thank you for contacting TransPennine Express and I hope you have a pleasant journey.

I responded to TPE expressing my surprise and dissatisfaction at this “counted place service”. Although this would not make too much difference to me, travelling on my own, I can imagine that two or more passengers travelling together might find this a real pain, particularly if children or other dependent travellers were involved. I still can’t believe that there are no facilities aboard certain TPE trains where neither physical paper labels nor electronic systems can be used. I was blissfully ignorant so this is to warn other people who may consider booking with TPE.

Owain_Moneysaver

This is correct, and not just TPE. There are other operators that use 'counted place' services. As TPE said, It also allows us to sell Advance Purchase tickets as the services have to be reservable for the ticket to be retailed.
Without using counted place services, there would be no Advance tickets and you would probably pay a lot more for your travel. 

confused_59

Hi Owain, I still don’t understand why seats can’t be booked on Advance fares - I’ve never come across this before, either with TPE or other operators such as LNER and its predecessors and their fares have been highly competitive. I don’t see why I’d be paying more for my travel by booking a specific seat.

JReacher1

Manchester Airport is the starting station so there is no chance of that train being close to full.  It will be at least half empty until it arrives at Manchester Picadilly.

Therefore although a bit annoying it isn't really a problem.

NBLondon

I've encountered this when booking trains from London to bits of South Yorkshire - specific seat from Kings Cross to Doncaster and free for all on TPE.    Does "counted place service" mean they sell only a certain number of Advance tickets for that service?  So they are attempting to say you will probably get a seat (based on the expected number of on the day travellers) but can't book a specific seat?  

lammy82

confused_59 said:

Hi Owain, I still don’t understand why seats can’t be booked on Advance fares - I’ve never come across this before, either with TPE or other operators such as LNER and its predecessors and their fares have been highly competitive. I don’t see why I’d be paying more for my travel by booking a specific seat.

What Owain is saying is that the Counted Place system is offered to allow Advance fares to be offered on services that don't otherwise have reservations. So, if they didn't have it, you would be paying more, because there would be no advance fares available at all.
There are various reasons for not offering specific seat reservations on journeys, but one reason for TP Express that they didn't mention is that they are in the middle of changing from one fleet of trains to another at the moment, so they need the flexibility to swap the train type on the day without confusing everyone.

You're in first class, there will be plenty of seats, honestly. Don't worry about it.