Buying train ticket on South Western Railway online for London Waterloo to Southampton Central

[ace123]

I tried to buy the above ticket and selected 'Collect ticket from the station'. I was asked to sign in my account. 

When I registered a new account, I was asked to provide a UK address which I don't have.

I've downloaded the SWR mobile app, but it doesn't work outside UK.

Is there a way to purchase the train ticket from Canada?

Thank you for your help.

 

[gumshoe958]

No, SWR won’t let you book with an address outside the UK.

 

You can, however, book tickets for SWR trains on any other operator’s site, and some do allow international purchases.
 

Try LNER instead: https://www.lner.co.uk

 

 

Edited August 8 by gumshoe958

[ace123]

30 minutes ago, gumshoe958 said:

No, SWR won’t let you book with an address outside the UK.

 

You can, however, book tickets for SWR trains on any other operator’s site, and some do allow international purchases.
 

Try LNER instead: https://www.lner.co.uk

 

 

Thank you for the useful informatioin.

I went to LNER. The train I wanted to book showed: NO seat reservation available. This train is fully reserved. You may have to stand for part or all of your journey.

It's a direct train. Is it possible they sell tickets but no seats available? I don't want to stand over one hour on the train.

Thanks again.

[gumshoe958]

4 minutes ago, ace123 said:

Thank you for the useful informatioin.

I went to LNER. The train I wanted to book showed: NO seat reservation available. This train is fully reserved. You may have to stand for part or all of your journey.

It's a direct train. Is it possible they sell tickets but no seats available? I don't want to stand over one hour on the train.

Thanks again.

Ignore that. It’s just a default message because SWR doesn’t do seat reservations - it’s always first come first served. Although it’s not guaranteed (for anyone), you should be fine getting a seat.

[ace123]

17 minutes ago, gumshoe958 said:

Ignore that. It’s just a default message because SWR doesn’t do seat reservations - it’s always first come first served. Although it’s not guaranteed (for anyone), you should be fine getting a seat.

Thank you so much for your help. I purchased the tickets.

[PhillyTravelBug]

I was getting very frustrated with this as well. We are just going to get tickets the day of. Leaving from Waterloo station, so I am assuming it won't be full.

[Globaliser]

12 hours ago, PhillyTravelBug said:

I was getting very frustrated with this as well. We are just going to get tickets the day of. Leaving from Waterloo station, so I am assuming it won't be full.

 

It won't, primarily because there's no such thing as "full" on these trains except on the rare occasions that you simply cannot physically pack any more bodies into the carriages and still shut the doors. There are fares for which there is no capacity limitation and full flexibility between trains, and SWR can continue to sell tickets at those fares regardless of how many people want to travel on any particular train.

 

But on the day, you may only be able to buy walk-up fares, which are more expensive than some tickets bought in advance. So if you want to buy a ticket in advance, there's no need to be frustrated with SWR's inability to accept a US address. Just buy it from some other Train Operating Company - basically, all of them sell each other's tickets, and usually at exactly the same price. (I usually use LNER, for personal reasons, and it's been mentioned above - but there's no need to pick LNER if you prefer to use some other TOC.)

[John Bull]

17 hours ago, PhillyTravelBug said:

I was getting very frustrated with this as well. We are just going to get tickets the day of. Leaving from Waterloo station, so I am assuming it won't be full.

 

Don't worry about the train being full - Waterloo to Southampton in the mornings won't be anywhere near full.

 

Yes you can buy tickets at the station, but they'll cost £54.50 each (£43.10 on a sunday)

Advance tickets cost only around £15 each - price is fluid, a little less from 12 weeks out and increasing as the date closes in.

The only limitation on cheap Advance tickets is that they must be purchased in Advance and are only good for the train time that you've selected - miss that train and those Advance tickets are trash.

But the savings are around £40 per person !!

The problem of buying from South Western without a UK address crops up frequently, but as others have said you can buy from any train operator, it doesn't have to be the operator of that route. So use https://www.lner.co.uk/ . The train times & prices will be the same as those offered by South-Western.

 

JB 🙂

[Kenswing]

On 8/7/2024 at 10:20 PM, ace123 said:

I tried to buy the above ticket and selected 'Collect ticket from the station'. I was asked to sign in my account. 

When I registered a new account, I was asked to provide a UK address which I don't have.

I've downloaded the SWR mobile app, but it doesn't work outside UK.

Is there a way to purchase the train ticket from Canada?

Thank you for your help.

 

You can indeed book tickets in advance.  I did this in May.  Download the app Omio.  We had our tickets on our phone.  Had no issues at all using them.

Book, search & compare trains, buses, flights & ferries - Omio