Booking bikes on transpennine express - a word of advice

[Kirstie]

I've just tried to do this with some difficulty so would like to pass on my experience.

TPE's website says that in order to book a bike on a train you need to call their call centre to book the ticket and the bike reservation at the same time. So I tried to do this - its for a journey to be undertaken in just under 12 weeks time so the cheapest tickets are available.

During the first call the employee:
- denied that there were any carriages on the train that took bikes (their website says that company policy is that there are bike spaces on every train)
and then failing that they:
- said that advanced tickets with bike reservations were not available. They clearly were as we were looking at them on their website.

So we booked the tickets and THEN phoned up with a ticket reservation number to book the bike spaces. We made sure that the tickets were the refundable type 'standard single' rather than 'advance single' which are non refundable. We made the bike reservations no problem.

The moral of the story is if you are booking your tickets far enough in advance, ignore the advice on the website, because the employees don't know what they are doing. Book your ticket and then make your bike reservation because they seem to understand what you want better.

 

[GrahamG]

I've always found the easiest way to sort bike bookings is to just do it at the station, or book the tickets online and ask for bike reservations at the station (just hand over the tickets). The station staff are always infinitely better than anyone on the end of a phone.

 

[andym]

The other alternative would be to use the National Express trains website. This allows you to book bikes on trains with other train operators. I used it last summer with First Great Western - I haven't tried with the Transpennine Express. It seemed to offer the full range of fares including the cheaper advanced trains.

Please don't ask me why National Express can do it with other companies who don't seem to be capable of doing the same thing on their own trains.

EDIT: Please see my correction below.

EDIT: see my second correction below.

 

[Kirstie]

The other alternative would be to use the National Express trains website. This allows you to book bikes on trains with other train operators. I used it last summer with First Great Western - I haven't tried with the Transpennine Express. It seemed to offer the full range of fares including the cheaper advanced trains.

Please don't ask me why National Express can do it with other companies who don't seem to be capable of doing the same thing on their own trains.

I found the same with First Scotrail. For some reason they have got it sussed and are nothing but helpful.

Graham going to the station is the easiest of course but I don't have that option this week and so I thought I'd try the complicated way. And in any case each company is different to deal with (as per article in CTC mag a while back) so it's good to build up a working knowledge of how relatively crap each company is and then to share it accordingly (IMO)

 

[andym]

I found the same with First Scotrail. For some reason they have got it sussed and are nothing but helpful.

I've just been looking again at the National Express website, it all seems to have changed:

How do I reserve a place for my bicycle?
Unfortunately we are unable to process bicycle reservations through our website.

However, one of our support team can process these requests over the phone by calling 08719 774 200.

Although bicycle reservations can be made after booking online, we recommend making your booking and bicycle reservation together through our call centre so we can confirm whether bicycle spaces are available on the train you wish to travel on.

Your bicycle will be stored in the guards van, so please give yourself enough time to locate it and load your bicycle before the train is scheduled to depart.

All I can say is 'OH FFS'.

EDIT: see my second correction of the day!

 

[Kirstie]

I've just been looking again at the National Express website, it all seems to have changed:



All I can say is 'OH FFS'.

TPE website text is exactly the same. It looks like they're trying to standardise it, which I suppose is a good thing. But if they don't train their staff to deal with it properly the whole thing is a non starter...

 

[Soltydog]

TPE are having a few staffing issues at the moment & cancelling a few services Don't know if that will be the case when you are travelling tho.
Most guards are quite good though & you can get 4 or more bikes on most TPE trains

 

[andym]

TPE website text is exactly the same. It looks like they're trying to standardise it, which I suppose is a good thing.

I'd rather they standardised the level of service upwards rather than downwards. National Express showed it could be done - so it must be a question of 'won't rather than can't'. Must get onto the CTC.

 

[Kirstie]

I'd rather they standardised the level of service upwards rather than downwards. National Express showed it could be done - so it must be a question of 'won't rather than can't'. Must get onto the CTC.

The problem is that:
- bike spaces don't seem to be released onto the system when the tickets are
- employees don't know how to interpret it, so it's always a case of 'computer says no' and some made up crappy response, or worse still two crappy made up and contradictory responses.

Of all of the CTC campaigns that they've done, this is the one I most want to get involved in after years of miserable experiences as a cycle tourer. That's not to mention when either me or my bike has been locked on a train because they've forgotten about me, when staff have been rude to me, when I've been trampled on by impatient people, been inconvenienced by a lack of spaces for others in my party etc

Only Scotrail are worth bothering with IMO.

 

[andym]

OK. Emailed the CTC and got a really fast response from Chris Peck.

The National Express reservations system has been taken over by East Coast Railways.

So forget National Express you need to go to http://www.eastcoast.co.uk/ and everything works as the old National Express site used to work - same passwords etc - no need to register. I tried a dummy booking on FGW going from London to Bristol and the bike booking facility seemed to be all present and correct.

According to Chris, Southern Railways also offer a bike booking facility on their website - although I haven't tried this and I don't know whether you can use it for other companies' trains.

 

[Dorcfilf]

I've just tried to do this with some difficulty so would like to pass on my experience.

TPE's website says that in order to book a bike on a train you need to call their call centre to book the ticket and the bike reservation at the same time. So I tried to do this - its for a journey to be undertaken in just under 12 weeks time so the cheapest tickets are available.

During the first call the employee:
- denied that there were any carriages on the train that took bikes (their website says that company policy is that there are bike spaces on every train)
and then failing that they:
- said that advanced tickets with bike reservations were not available. They clearly were as we were looking at them on their website.

So we booked the tickets and THEN phoned up with a ticket reservation number to book the bike spaces. We made sure that the tickets were the refundable type 'standard single' rather than 'advance single' which are non refundable. We made the bike reservations no problem.

The moral of the story is if you are booking your tickets far enough in advance, ignore the advice on the website, because the employees don't know what they are doing. Book your ticket and then make your bike reservation because they seem to understand what you want better.

I have had the same problem and different ones as well
My best experience has been with WhatsApp.The reply was very quick and we were able to cancel two spaces and re-book on a later train the same day as travel.
WhatsApp us on 07812 223 336
(Copied and pasted from TPX website)

 

[Dwn]

A word of caution on TPE. I used the Manchester to Glasgow service every week for a few years. The first three times I tried to get on with my bike at Manchester the train was so rammed that I was physically unable to board. In the end I switched to using a brompton.