Every now and then we like to have a day out into London. Sam loves checking out the National History Museum whilst Mum likes the shopping.

Normally we drive into Peterborough (because our local train service is somewhat unreliable) and then catch the train from there.

We discovered some time ago that a Family Railcard would save us a small fortune on this journey in return for a £24 fee.

So when I travel into London at peak times during the week, it can cost me as much as £80 return. Travelling off peak however brings this down quite a bit so an off peak ticket on the weekend for the 3 of us comes in at £65 all in. But use the railcard and this cost comes down to less than £40 for the three of us. Bargain!

But I discovered today that National Express East Coast who run this service have started charging to reserve seats on their service. The cost? £2.50 per seat per train. So for the return trip to London that adds £15 to the £40 fare.

That’s a 37% increase!!!

So I am told that this is because too many people were booking tickets, reserving (for free) seats and then catching a different train. This resulted in all the seats on a train having reserved tickets on them giving the impression that there are no free seats. I am also told that this charge only applies to flexible tickets. Where the tickets are ties to a specific train where the seat reservation is mandatory, this charge is not levied.

So here is the National Express East Coast Press Release on this:

Seat reservations on East Coast and East Anglia train services

12 May 2009

From Sunday 17 May, a £2.50 booking fee will apply to some seat reservations on National Express East Coast and National Express East Anglia.

Seat reservations made on some Standard Class ticket types are optional for the customer and could apply to about 25% of people travelling. If a customer does not want to reserve a seat, there is no charge.

This does not apply to any Advance Purchase tickets, First Class tickets, Season Tickets, customers with a Disabled Railcard or assisted passengers.

A National Express spokesperson said, “We want to improve the on-board environment for our customers.  We do find that people are often reserving multiple seats as they’re not sure which train they are going to catch.  Whilst we understand this, by asking people to pay for a seat reservation, seats will no longer be left empty with a reserved sign, therefore being made available for other customers to use.”

Now I can see the logic but on a weekend there are very few if any advanced tickets to be had and to be fair, what offers there are are much more expensive than using the railcard to get a standard off peak return. In addition I have yet to find anybody who can tell me how you can possibly book more than one seat to one ticket.

But for a family of 3 (of course if it is a family of 4 it costs even more) this adds 37% to the overall cost of the ticket and having travelled out of London on a Saturday tea time, not having a seat reservation means standing for the entire journey. These trains get busy.

Maybe if this was £2.50 PER BOOKING rather than PER SEAT things would be better for families.

But there is one more point here.

The flexible tickets are the tickets that are regulated. The train companies cannot just put the fares up without going through due process and even then, caps exist to stop increases that are more than the rate of inflation. Of course the additional charges for seat reservations etc are not regulated! Doesn’t take a genius does it?

So are we about to see National Express East Coast take a leaf out of the RyanAir book of better business? After all, some train companies charge a booking fee, some charge a collection fee for tickets from the machines at the stations and some charge a credit card surcharge.

So if they do this right, then the revenues are going to look good next year but all at the expense of the passenger who in many cases has no choice but to pay up or stand up!