In this case the trip is 100% refundable. You have nothing to worry about.
As Acela150 said, if they cancel on you, it is at least 100% refundable. It's even possible that if you call customer relations and explain how badly this screws things up, they may be willing to give you further compensation. My point is, I'm sure you will not have lost money on your ticket.
Did you talk to customer relations or customer service? Customer service just means the regular agents at USA-RAIL. Customer relations is a specific branch that deals with compensating passengers, and you have to specifically ask to talk to them.
Which exactly aligns with their published policy. Expecting otherwise was unrealistic.
Yeah, Amtrak is not really obligated in the slightest to comp non-Amtrak travel bookings. Sometimes CR may be willing to give you extra cash or a voucher, but that's really only if they're treating you especially well, and it's not technically Amtrak comping lost bookings, if that makes sense.
In my opinion, asking a car manufacturer to comp you if a road was closed is not really analogous to asking for compensation from Amtrak. If anything, that's basically the equivalent of asking Bombardier or Morrison-Knudsen for compensation, but I don't think anyone is doing that.It would be the same thing if you were driving, and the road was closed due to a pile-up or a bridge collapse or if you were flying and they closed the airport because of snow. You would not expect Ford, Dodge, United or American to compensate you for your hotel or rental. So why do you expect Amtrak to do so?
It was not even their fault. It was BNSF that derailed. You would not expect U-Haul to compensate you if driving - just because a U-Haul got into an accident on the road?
How is that even close to the same reasoning? No one's saying Amtrak is liable for the train crashing. The only thing that was suggested is that Amtrak should pay for the hotel/rental car. Which I don't necessarily agree with, but if Amtrak isn't providing alternate transportation and the refund isn't enough to cover alternate transportation purchased separately, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask Amtrak to cover the difference.Using the same reasoning, if you got into a car accident in Texas, should you say New York State DOT is liable because the road was not maintained correctly?
Couldn’t agree more. When we called customer relations about a 20 hour late Silver Meteor that had derailed and run out of food, their very first offer was two $300 e-vouchers I’m a $520 ticket. They didn’t argue at all or anything like that - they just understood immediately and gave us $600 in vouchers. Try calling the airlines about that kind of stuff - you’re probably not going to end up top satisfied.
