It's probably some kind of scam.
The two biggest giveaways is it has a bogus MAY date rather than August (month & day switched), and the failure to NOT use your proper name like 'Mr Bill Smith' or whatever. I'm guessing that the 'PnrNumber' is a screen name you use at a different site. I get scam emails all the time addressed to bratkinson, which tells me instantly they got my screen name from a web site and not an official correspondence from whatever bank or credit card company or business they supposedly represent.
Just to be safe, I'd definitely call Amtrak reservations to confirm the change in departure times.
What you write about the date was well spotted, I didn't notice as it is the sequence we use in Europe, day/month/year. Why would Amtrak use a European date sequence, it's certainly not a May 2019 notice as I didn't book until the 20 June 2019.
That looks like a normal email from Amtrak. To check, you could go to amtrak.com and pull up your reservation. The PnrNumber is probably a placeholder if they didn't have your name (the PnrNumber is what the reservation number is called.) I'm also guessing the date is set by your computer, not the email itself (assuming you use day/month/year instead of the American month/day/year.)
I wouldn't click any links in the email, just to be safe, but if you have a trip during that time it's likely that your schedule has changed. Your eTicket should work automatically, either in the app or with the old one. You should also be able to re-trigger Amtrak sending out the ticket on amtrak.com as well (though I don't recall the exact steps.)
Hello Jeb. The PNR number is called the 'reservation number ' on the eticket. I get the point about my computer dating system but have never before seen an email where the date sequence was altered in a received email, but computers are not my field so I can't say for sure.
I've had maybe 10 or more 'Updated' eticket advisories over the last few years for which I've been grateful and think it's an excellent system, but until now they all looked like the original eticket with the word '
UPDATED' added to the title in capital letters and in bold. Have never seen this format that arrived today and the language just didn't come across as well business-like.
Amtrak's auto-generated emails notifying passengers of schedule changes have been a mess for years. This looks like the normal "formatting" (if you want to even call it that) of their emails, including the leading zero for the train number (which they never figured out how to trim).
I forget what ACN stands for (in the email), but it's something like Automatic Customer Notification...or something. That used to be a robocall from the call center telling you of a schedule change. Then they finally changed it to email (since far too many people were missing calls), and kept the acronym.
Have to write the addition of 'acn' in the email address made me suspicious, it wasn't an address I had seen before.
If you look at your original ticket you may find that the departure and/or arrival times are different then the ones in this notice ... even if the time changed by only 1 minute, they will send an update to your schedule.
Yes the arrival time is 15 minutes later, I do understand that even a minute will trigger such a notice, but after ordering the tickets on the 20 June, Amtrak then sent an update in the form of another 'UPDATE' eticket on the 24 June, this second update is a copy of the first in detail although not layout.
I have received many of similar emails from Amtrak informing me of a schedule change. Sometimes, a departure or arrival time is changed by minutes. I appreciate the email and have never been concerned about its legitimacy. I agree with Qapla's suggestion.
This is what I wanted to hear, that there is more than one format to update passengers
This is a rather confusing thread. Publishing your personal trip details on a public forum is how you get scammed. A bit of social engineering and a short sob story would easily convert your ticket into my refund. Literally anyone on the internet can read and save these posts with or without a membership.
Have you got the refund yet?
hahaha
You make a good point that scamming can happen all the time, although as there is no name on the email how would someone scam a reservation number. The tickets are coach with no car No. mentioned so not going to be approached once on board, I'm just trying to follow the logic of how scamming a reservation number works.
Thanks everybody for contributing, and in particular explaining that this type of notice is common, I just haven't seen one before.
@pennyk Thank you as moderator for removing the PNR number, I do appreciate that you take the trouble to do this for the rest of us.
