YOUR readers may not be aware of the following practice by National Express.

On March 2, I booked a return ticket online to London from Darlington, travelling on April 26. I subsequently received confirmation for the journey and given the seat numbers that had been allocated.

Unfortunately, I mislaid my tickets prior to the journey but assumed that as I had purchased them online and been given a unique booking number and precise details of seat numbers, on payment of a fee it would be a simple matter of getting duplicate tickets issued.

How wrong could I be. I was told that under no circumstances would duplicate tickets be issued, even though the seats booked were allocated to me.

The only way I could make the journey would be to purchase new tickets which obviously were at a much higher price than I originally paid.

No doubt I would be sitting in the seats I had already paid for as they would have been vacant.

What sort of a company is it that shows such a dismissive attitude to its customers as this? No wonder people avoid using the train.

John Robinson, Darlington.