Ticket overselling blamed for Coventry City trains chaos

Train chaos during Coventry City fans’ Wembley trip was caused in part by an online retailer overselling rail tickets, Chiltern Railways says.

Chiltern Railways said it had advised its passengers not to travel after ticket sales exceeded capacity.

Retailer Trainline said all affected customers were entitled to full, fee-free refunds.

Richard Allan, managing director of Chiltern Railways, told BBC CWR that services had been oversold by as much as 50%.

Thousands of fans were informed not to use trains with less than 12 hours’ notice, despite having already bought rail tickets.

“The vast majority of journeys that were purchased for that day were bought from a third party website, they weren’t sold by Chiltern,” Mr Allan said.

“I want to say sorry to those Coventry fans and other customers of the railway for the difficult journeys that people experienced.”

He added Chiltern was conducting an internal review and would work with retailers to avoid future occurrences when large volumes of journeys had been sold.

A Chiltern spokesperson added that full refunds were available to those who had chosen not to travel, even if tickets had been activated, as long as codes had not been scanned.

West Midlands mayor Andy Street said “we have to prevent [the situation] happening again”.

He added: “The industry has to learn that lesson, because it is madness that the system can sell many more tickets than there were spaces available.”

A Trainline spokesperson said: “We’re sorry to hear about the difficult journeys many passengers faced on this exceptionally busy day.

“Trainline and the whole rail industry follow the same ticketing rules, and there were no industry restrictions set limiting ticket sales on these trains.

“However we did display messages on our app and website advising against travel on these trains once this advice was announced by the train operator.

“Anyone who bought a ticket from Trainline but did not use it on this day is entitled to a full fee-free refund.”

There were further matchday rail difficulties for fans last month when Avanti West Coast services – to which Chiltern customers were redirected – experienced unrelated network delays.

Avanti has apologised to fans returning to Coventry and said those delayed by longer than 15 minutes could claim compensation.

A spokesperson for London Northwestern Railway has also apologised for train cancellations between Birmingham and London Euston, caused by a signalling fault on the line.

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