Reservation Change, New Roomette Assignment?

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Dovecote

Dovecote

OBS Chief
Joined
Jul 22, 2009
Messages
848
Location
Miramar Beach, Florida
I have an upcoming reservation on the Auto Train which includes a roomette. The price of the roomette was lowered this morning (thanks AmSnag for the alert) from $210 to the low bucket of $138. I quickly called Amtrak to book the lower rate and fortunately I was successful. The agent handling the change assigned me to a different car than my original assignment. Was this necessary? Couldn't I have just remained in the same car and room? I certainly would have like to stay in my original car and room assignment.
 
Nice snag! (pun intended! ^_^ )I'm going to speculate that there were probably lots of people calling Amtrak when they saw the decrease in Roomette Prices on the AutoTrain and the Computer randomly assigned you a different Room and Car since the Agent either didnt know how to process the change properly (Alan B always says a good Agent can do this) or else was Lazy and let the Computer do it the easy way?? You should have been able to stay in the same Room! ;)
 
Its possible they added the 45 car back to inventory which is what caused the price to drop. If that's the case they're probably just trying to balance the load so that all of the cars are at relatively similar occupancy rather than having five full sleepers and one with only a few rooms sold.
 
The same thing happened to me for a trip on the California Zephyr coming up this Thursday. I was moved from Roomette 8 to 11. No big deal, would have been the first time I've ridden downstairs. But a few days later I received another email from Amtrak with an e-ticket attached. This time I was in Roomette 22 (TransDorm, right?). I called and asked what happened. The agent informed me that a large group had just booked sleepers and wanted to stay together. Totally fine with me. So I asked if they had any other roomettes available in 0531 or 0532. They put me in 0532 room 8.

Grateful to Amtrak and Amsnag for the $75 voucher.
 
What technical terms would one use to explain to the agent how to change the fare without changing the room?
 
You might be able top call back now and change back to your original room. When I booked my trip last fall, I could not get all the way to my final destination the way I wanted to without breaking my trip at Denver. I didn't stay there, just had two separate reservations for the same train. Until the total trip reservation was finalized, the system would not let the agent book me to cointinue in the same roomette from Denver to SAC (that I had occupied from CHI to DEN). But as soon as it was finalized, she looked, and it had released the roomette for that section, so she was then able to change the roomette so I could stay in the same place. Try calling back and JUST changing the roomette without cancelling and re-booking (it's possible with a good agent, I've done it several times).
 
My daughter an I had a roomette coming east on the Southwest chief to Chicago have been waiting for bedrooms to come down as my daughter is disabled and mobility problems.since bedroom price continues to increase I called Amtrak to see if they would continue rise and explained about my daughter put me on hold and came back that the accessible bedroom was available has a toilet and sink in it for a $133. more than we were paying for the roomette.I told her I would take it.Thanked her for going the extra mile.Since our final destination is Philadelphia we are in the roomette again since the accessible bedroom is not available she said to check back because you never know.
 
Dovecote said:
The agent handling the change assigned me to a different car than my original assignment. Was this necessary? Couldn't I have just remained in the same car and room? I certainly would have like to stay in my original car and room assignment.
Click to expand...
Well it's necessary in the sense that the agent cannot just change the price on the room. My understanding is that the agent must release the current room back to inventory and then request a room from the pool to get the lower price. Now, there are two ways to request a room. 1) Simply ask ARROW to supply a room from point A to B. This is the easiest and will most often result in a new room being assigned and perhaps even a new car. 2) Pull up the available inventory for the train, select the car you want, then select the room you want. This requires a bit more work on the part of the agent. It's not a lot more work, but it is more work than just telling ARROW to give you an available room for that train and city pair.

While all agents are trained in both methods, probably 95% of the time they only need to use method #1 so some forget how to do method #2. And of course some simply consider anything that requires more work, even if it is only a few keystrokes, taboo. But if all one says to an agent is "I'd like the lower price" you are most likely going to find yourself with a room & car change. One must be far more specific that you not only want the lower price, but you would really like to keep the same room.
 
What also possibly happened is the agent reserved a new room at the lower price before cancelling the old room. That's actually the safer way to do it, because there's theoretically the possibility that in the few seconds between when they cancel your old space and reserve your new space, someone else could swoop in, book several rooms (including your old one), and either raise the fares way up, or even sell out the train, leaving you with nothing.

Unlikely, but still possible.

With ARROW, there's no way to release a room into inventory and grab a room from inventory in the same transaction entry. The two must be done separately.
 
AlanB said:
Dovecote said:
The agent handling the change assigned me to a different car than my original assignment. Was this necessary? Couldn't I have just remained in the same car and room? I certainly would have like to stay in my original car and room assignment.
Click to expand...
Well it's necessary in the sense that the agent cannot just change the price on the room. My understanding is that the agent must release the current room back to inventory and then request a room from the pool to get the lower price. Now, there are two ways to request a room. 1) Simply ask ARROW to supply a room from point A to B. This is the easiest and will most often result in a new room being assigned and perhaps even a new car. 2) Pull up the available inventory for the train, select the car you want, then select the room you want. This requires a bit more work on the part of the agent. It's not a lot more work, but it is more work than just telling ARROW to give you an available room for that train and city pair.

While all agents are trained in both methods, probably 95% of the time they only need to use method #1 so some forget how to do method #2. And of course some simply consider anything that requires more work, even if it is only a few keystrokes, taboo. But if all one says to an agent is "I'd like the lower price" you are most likely going to find yourself with a room & car change. One must be far more specific that you not only want the lower price, but you would really like to keep the same room.
Click to expand...
Trogdor said:
What also possibly happened is the agent reserved a new room at the lower price before cancelling the old room. That's actually the safer way to do it, because there's theoretically the possibility that in the few seconds between when they cancel your old space and reserve your new space, someone else could swoop in, book several rooms (including your old one), and either raise the fares way up, or even sell out the train, leaving you with nothing.
Unlikely, but still possible.

With ARROW, there's no way to release a room into inventory and grab a room from inventory in the same transaction entry. The two must be done separately.
Click to expand...
Thanks for these detailed explanations. I will keep this in the vault for the next time this situation occurs.
 
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