Great Western Coffee Shop

Travelling from Southampton to Yatton on Friday, I see that there is a ^4.30 YP advance single on the 1810. Having selected it and gone through the seating preferences and what not it comes up with an error...

"We have been unable to successfully validate your journey for the following reason:
E00219
No availability for requested accom on leg from SOU to BTH on 15/10/2010"

Should FGW really be advertising these tickets if they have technically sold out!!

It's not exactly wrongly selling if it won't let you buy it :P

But it can happen sometimes, where the quota for the advance ticket is available, but it's not possible to reserve. For some reason the system can't tell, until you actually try to book, which is a shame, but it's one of those things that needs addressing.

I've had exactly the same whilst at the advance purchase office of Temple Meads.  The fare showed as available, but the clerk couldn't make a reservation for that service.  Threw out a very similar error message.

Probably a common error.

Quite right.

Since FGW are not actually "wrongly selling" advance tickets as you claim, d_m, would you please edit the original heading? Thanks.

THe answer, from FGW Fares management, is as follows -

this can occur when all seats on the train are reserved, as availability remains for the wheelchair space and designated companion seat - we have tested it by reserving these and the issue then does not occur.  The service in question is fully reserved (not all seats on the West DMUs are reservable, due to the considerable walk-up traffic on these routes).

The Advance quotas as set can occasionally exceed the seating capacity on some services, mainly these DMU services due to the low number of reservable seats - this is now being reviewed in order to stop this issue re-occurring.

So is every seat on HSS now reservable for advance fares?  It used to be the case that one coach was unreserved and I thought some seats were not available for reservation with an advance fare.  I don't remember ever getting in Coach A on an APEX but there were seats in Coach A that were reserved.

I don't think so.

E is not reserved

I remember in my younger days getting Super Advances, Apex's and Super Apex (once), reserved in coach A.

Although you had to do some nifty codes in CRS to force it to accept it.
Somthing like BRIPAD1234A09FSURNAME, many years ago that green on black screen.

Progress eh? Pah!

Yeah and CRS would tell you how many seats were left in that price band in that allocation.
I remember being told there were only 5 seats left in the Apex allocation and then the screen was refreshed and they'd gone just like that!

Some trains also seemed to have a very low Apex allocation.  I was never able to get on the 09:40 from Newton Abbot to Paddington on an Apex ticket but did get a Super Advance.

Even harder to get a super apex!
But what was stupid was an apex was cheaper then a super advance without a railcard and thus had less quota.
But a super advance was cheaper with a railcard!