Avid rail passengers will be aware of the pains that comes with getting onto a train without a seat reservation, and not knowing if you’ll have to stand up for the duration of your travels.

However, a travel expert named Chelsea – who brands herself ‘Cheap Holiday Expert’, made a video about how she and her partner James had been kicked off their train in Preston Station after their train got cancelled. And while they were able to get on another train, they had lost their seat reservations.

If this has happened to you, you’ll be happy to know that Chelsea and James has a free hack to make sure you never have to go without a seat reservation again.

James explained in a TikTok video: “Go to Twitter, now X, and chat to Avanti West Coast,” to which Chelsea chimed in: “Or whatever network you’re on.

“I’ve been chatting to Kim from Avanti, and I was like ‘Kim, train’s cancelled, what do I do now?’ and she said ‘Get the 16:18’ and I was like ‘Can you get me a seat reservation on that?’ and she’s like ‘sure, here you are. Seat D3 and D4’.”

They then went on to see if the simple hack had actually worked, so on they went to catch their new train.

“Oh my god, it’s so busy,” Chelsea stated as they arrived at the packed platform where lines had formed at each train door of people wanting to board the train.

“I really really hope this seat reservation hacked has worked.”

And much to their surprise, their seats had been reserved to their final destination in Crewe and they were able to sit comfortably the whole way despite the train being packed full of people. “There’s no way we would’ve gotten a seat without [the hack],” Chelsea said.

One person commented: “I’ve always been told they can only do it if there’s more than an hour/2 til the next one (GWR)” to which Chelsea replied: “Will depend on what network, but Avanti have always been very on it for us! Always worth a punt!!”

Another person wrote: “I work for Avanti support service, just a warning they sometimes (a lot) turn off the seat reservations depending if they think the service will be that busy, but definitely worth a go.”