AGR Changes to Ticketed Itinerary

All,

I have an AGR reservation for next week on EB & CS. 2 Zone Bedroom for my son and I.

It's looking more and more like I need to start worry about the flooding in North Dakota possibly impacting this trip.

I've started to look into the "Plan B" scenarios. I already have the physical tickets (printed from the machine at the station). Does anyone know what happens if I request a change in routing? For example, even though the EB has not officially been cancelled for next week do they allow for changes to a ticketed AGR itinerary now?

I'm likely going to change to CZ, but was wondering what kind of runaround this will be with points involved.

Thanks.

Mike

With points involved and printed tickets, you're likely hosed.

Normal Amtrak agents can't touch AGR reservations unless they absolutely have to (like your train just got cancelled and AGR is closed).

Unless you have enough points in your account to book another trip now, you'll have to mail the tickets back to AGR, wait for the points to get put back into your account and then book your Plan B trip.

If you hadn't printed the tickets, it'd be a simple and easy phone call. By printing the tickets early, you've really put yourself in a tight spot, though.

Ryan, is this still the case now that AGR is in house? If so, that totally sucks for the OP. What about if he brought the tickets to the station? Any luck there?

I'm not sure about it that it's now in house, but that's the way it's been. I advise the OP to call AGR (not Amtrak) and find out for sure.

And as Ryan said, it is best not to print your tickets (either paid or AGR) until you have to - such as at the station just before departure if you depart from a staffed station or one with a QT! It makes changes of this type much easier.

I think that it helps with agents on the phone, but if you have tickets in hand the only way I know how turn them back into points is by mailing and waiting.

I agree that calling AGR is the best bet, but I'm afraid the answer is going to be "I'm sorry, but we can't help you until we get the tickets back". It may be worth FedExing them overnight, but you'll have to talk to them to see if that's even an option.

Thanks for the info. Luckily yes, I do have just enough banked points to make a new reservation if needed. I guess in that case I will still get the 30k points back once they process the unused tickets.

That's excellent news, then.

I think that I'd go ahead and make the reservations for Plan B, I think that's a much safer course of action at this point.

AGR frowns on changes in person for various reasons, but if the trip is very close (typically under 2 weeks) and there isn't time to send things back, they should be able to make arrangements for a ticket exchange with an agent. Obviously it cannot be done via a Quik-Trak machine, since the current tickets need to be voided. But even before bringing AGR in house it was possible for an AGR agent to setup the changes and then get an agent to handle the exchange.