Points penalty for dropping a portion of train reservation?

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Pooh2

Service Attendant
Joined
Jan 26, 2013
Messages
127
We currently have a reservation booked on points for Albuquerque to St. Louis. We are thinking of getting off at Kansas City and dropping the Missouri River Runner portion of the trip in favor of heading down to drive Route 66 with a rental car.

Is there a points penalty for making a change to the reservation?

The current price of Albuquerque to Kansas City is actually more points than we paid for the Albuquerque to St. Louis ticket.

We thought about just leaving the reservation as is but did not know if they hold the Missouri River Runner if the SC is running a tad late. Would not want them to be waiting on us as well as holding two business class seats. Any thoughts?
 
If you cancel any portion of a reservation, there is a 10% refund penalty soon to be 20%. The current price of Albuquerque to Kansas City is based on price available on date you make the actual purchase. My suggestion is just to cancel the Missouri River Runner knowing it will result in a 10% or 20% points refund penalty. That should not affect your Albuquerque to Kansas City portion of the trip.
 
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If you cancel any portion of a reservation, there is a 10% refund penalty soon to be 20%. The current price of Albuquerque to Kansas City is based on price available on date you make the actual purchase. My suggestion is just to cancel the Missouri River Runner knowing it will result in a 10% or 20% points refund penalty. That should not affect your Albuquerque to Kansas City portion of the trip.
Thanks.
 
I will be in a similar situation in November (will not be traveling on the second leg of a reservation). I will not be entitled to any refund (this an AGR 1.0 reservation) but I hope there isn't some interpretation that would result in a penalty for giving capacity back to Amtrak.
 
The unanswered question in my mind is "10% [or 20%] of WHAT? Is it the total cost? The cost of the cancelled part? The difference between new cost and old cost? If it is a total cancellation the answer is obvious, but if it's a change in the reservation it is not clear to me at all.
 
We called and were refunded 4,000 pts for the Missouri River Runner portion of the trip. Glad we called!

Those points will come in handy for next spring!
 
The unanswered question in my mind is "10% [or 20%] of WHAT? Is it the total cost? The cost of the cancelled part? The difference between new cost and old cost? If it is a total cancellation the answer is obvious, but if it's a change in the reservation it is not clear to me at all.
That is what we were concerned about as well as we did not realize that it is based on the price the day we booked rather than today's price. But it must be based on 10% of the cancelled portion because we ended up with 4,000 points back. Not sure how she came up with that amount but sounds good to me!
 
The unanswered question in my mind is "10% [or 20%] of WHAT? Is it the total cost? The cost of the cancelled part? The difference between new cost and old cost? If it is a total cancellation the answer is obvious, but if it's a change in the reservation it is not clear to me at all.
The penalty is supposed to be on the difference, but many agents are just cancelling the 1.0 reservation and then booking a 2.0 reservation. Thus they are assessing the penalty on the full amount. (They are not amending the reservation.)
Example: Under 1.0, you booked a 20,000 point award, but now you need to revise it to a 13,500 point award. The penalty should be only on the 6,500 point difference, but many agents cancel the 20,000 point award and book a new reservation. Thus you get a penalty on the full 20,000! :(
 
Yes, and if you can get a supervisor on the line they can override that. It takes some talking, however (CHamilton had some experience with this).
 
I just had an experience last night. we wanted to get off at PHL instead of NYP while traveling on the Crescent. Sure, we could have walked off but we wanted to check a bag and it would have gone to NYP unless I could convince the ticket agent in Greenville otherwise but I would not have known if that were possible until the last minute and that possibility affected our packing. I called Amtrak and the agent insisted it would be more points (39K vs the 21K we paid). I asked her to please let me discuss the issue with a supervisor.

Last time I had and issue and I disagreed with an agent, I just stated "I would like to speak with a supervisor" every time she tried to argue that she was right. After 4 times calmly stating "I would like to speak with a supervisor" between her rants, she hung up on me. I called back and the agent said he could do it "no problem".

This time I tried to be even nicer and "I would like to discuss the issue with a supervisor" had to be repeated 3 times between negative responses about what I wanted to do before she stated that no supervisor was available but she would transfer me to a lead agent (not sure the exact word). He said he could do it with no problem even though I told hm keeping the assigned roomettes across from each other and keeping the same number of points was more important than anything. After doing it, he asked if there were anything else he could do so I asked why the original agent could not do it. He said he had access to more info and could make more changes than the regular agents.

So once again, if they can't do it, nicely ask for a supervisor. If they get nasty or hang up, call back.
 
If they get nasty or hang up, call back.
Yeah, if Amtrak gets nasty or hangs up on you for having the gall to do business with them, just keep calling back and calmly begging for someone to take your business seriously. :lol:

*Nothing against MLM intended here, just thought that was funny (and kind of sad) to end the post that way.
 
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Yesterday I had an AGR I trip Chicago - Portland - San Jose modified to Chicago - Seattle. Nicole at AGR was very helpful. Because she was having computer problems, she suggested I hang up and she said she would call me back in about five minutes which she did.

The results were what I was hoping - a refund of the points difference with a 10% penalty applied to the refunded points, not the full amount. Nicole said she and her supervisor manually made the adjustments as they couldn't get the computer to produce the result they were expecting.

Interestingly, the points cost for the Chicago - Seattle in a bedroom was lower under AGR II than it would have been under AGR I.
 
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