“He who goes hunting loses his place!” This adage now applies to passengers on TGV and Intercités trains who take a while to settle in…
When you travel, you are used to taking a little time to avoid missing your train, to take the time to get to the platform, to smoke a last cigarette before a long journey, then to put down your suitcase, to go and have a coffee at the bar and to go to the toilets… You will have to change your habits, because a new rule from the SNCF is likely to disrupt users who take time to find their seat.
The objective of this new measure?Promote the replacement of customers on board in the event of a passenger’s absence“, explains the SNCF to the consumer association UFC-Que Choisir. This mainly concerns those who buy a ticket at the last minute, and who are allowed to board trains that are already full without a guarantee of a seat. Thus, if a person is not on the train as planned, due to a missed connection for example or a simple delay, a vacant seat could be reallocated to these passengers so that they can have a seat rather than folding seats. It is then up to the controller to assign them a free seat based on these vacant seats. For the SNCF, the idea would therefore be above all to offer solutions to its customers.
But to offer them this alternative, the public company had to modify its general conditions of sale by including a new rule, which determines the time allowed to take possession of its headquarters.Failure to claim a reserved seat within 15 minutes of the train’s departure from the station indicated on the ticket may result in the loss of the reserved seat reservation and, more generally, of any seat.”can we read in paragraph 6.2.6 of the general conditions dated January 2024.
In other words, if you delay in sitting in the seat indicated on your ticket, and that you have paid for, you risk losing it! However, rest assured, if you see another person sitting in your seat a quarter of an hour after the train has left and you contact a ticket inspector, everything will be back to normal: “If, in the end, the traveler [titulaire de la place] arises, the skipper is present to find a solution to this situation.”