On 1 Mar, 11:58, Martin Petrov
wrote:
I can't offer a direct answer to the question about East Croydon, but I'm
almost 100% sure that buying tickets through the website is almost
certainly not going to get you the best possible seat option.

I used Southern's website this time, but previously I have always used
the Trainline and been satisfied. I always ask for an aisle seat and
have always got one. However, the Trainline didn't have the open-ended
ticket to the end(ish) of May that I was wanting, but Southern did.

I have made two trips via Virgin. On the first, I had reserved a seat
via website, but on boarding the train, it had NOT been reserved.
Luckily it wasn't busy that day, and I got an empty seat no problem.
On the second trip, they forgotten to load the food and drink for the
buffet car, so from London, there was nothing available unitl we got
to York and arrangements were made. As the joke goes, the name
"Virgin" should be changed, because it's f*cked! :-)

On a related note, Mr Branson has been reminding us recently that we
can expect and energy crunch (and particularly and oil shortage)
around 2015. So why does he have this ambition to waste fule by flying
people into space. I'm convinced he's right on this matter, as the oil
price zoomed in 2008 when the world was still in a boom. Next time the
economy takes off, things are probably going to be worse.