Amtrak is on my Sh*t List right now, that's for sure. I'm going to call them (again) once I've calmed down. I just made it to the hotel about an hour ago. The TRE and various shuttles took longer than I thought. The TRE was fine, that is, but the shuttles took forever because of the ice. I'm kind of a ball of stress right now, and Amtrak had a big part in that.
First of all, I didn't get a call, text, or email. Now, the original res was made through State Farm, and then I called to pay for the upgrade to the roomette. I gave them my email address for the e-ticket, but I can't remember if I gave them my phone number for alerts. Even if I had, I'm betting the State Farm Business Travel Center was the primary contact number on the reservation. That, or more likely, it was my work number.
Regardless, when I got to the station, they had the white board up, and it just said, "Train #21 Arriving:" and then "we'll keep you posted" instead of a time. I knew both trains were delayed, so I figured I'd just hang out and wait. I saw #22 moving along the map on Amtrak's site. I made eye contact with the agents several times, and neither of them asked if I was waiting for #21 or #22. To be fair, the TRE goes to DFW, and I had bags, so they may have assumed I was waiting for that. But, I sat there for a couple of hours before I saw Joe's post about the trains.
I went up to the counter to verify. I said, "Hi! I'm on #22 today, and..." and the agent interrupted me, shook her head, and said, "Mm-mmm... #22 ain't runnin'. That's canceled. No trains until Sunday." She didn't look at me that entire time, and after she finished her statement, she kept messing with her computer. No apology, no solution, no, "Call Amtrak," nothing. :angry:
So, I had a choice. Either call our Business Travel Center and try to book a flight, or get on the phone with Amtrak to hurry up and reserve Sunday just in case the flights were all taken. (Keep in mind hundreds and hundreds of flights had been canceled.) I decided to call Amtrak right away. The hold time was around 20 minutes, which I expected, and then the agent was fairly nice but couldn't get my reservation to transfer. She'd had to manually put the charges in so it wouldn't charge me Sunday's prices, and it was giving her issues. We'd been on the phone for about forty minutes at this point, as she kept having to put me on hold to talk to someone about it, so I'd been on the phone for around an hour. She finally came back on and said, "You know what? When you left Kalamazoo, did you give the conductor the wrong ticket?" Um, no, all four segments were under one QR code. :angry: I knew she had to ask, so I wasn't mad at her, but I was so tired/annoyed at this point. She explained that, somehow, the conductor lifted the Chicago to Kalamazoo ticket, not my Kalamazoo to Chicago ticket. That's why she couldn't transfer the reservation.
So then she said, "I have to transfer you to Refunds, they'll fix the ticket issue, and then they can transfer you back to us to modify your reservation again." Oh, HELL no. I was running out of time to call our BTC, so I told her thank you but I had to disconnect. At no point during the conversation did she say anything about lodging or offer an apology. She just said that the train was being halted at Fort Worth, so they canceled everything today and tomorrow. That was it.
I then spent another hour and a half speaking with my BTC rep, who was so friendly and wonderful and did everything in her power to get me into a hotel and onto a flight tomorrow afternoon. She also gave me their 24-hour emergency number just in case tomorrow's flight is canceled.
Unfortunately, she booked me into a hotel for tomorrow night, not tonight. Luckily, I noticed the error while I was on the TRE and called the hotel right away. They had 20 rooms left, so they gave me one. When I got here, the same clerk gave me my key and told me that between the time I'd called and the time I checked in, they'd booked those other 19 rooms. If I hadn't noticed the error, I either would have had to switch hotels (more traveling in the cold) or slept on a couch in their lobby.
Anyway, now that I'm warm and comfy and a little bit calmed down, I'm going to call Amtrak and make sure everything has been canceled and a refund is being processed. I'm sorry if this was long, but I really needed to vent. I realize I'm lucky to have a place to stay, and I'll still get home tomorrow, so I feel kind of bad for feeling stressed, but there it is.