Reservation glitch today?

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Siegmund

Lead Service Attendant
Joined
Nov 19, 2018
Messages
470
Location
northwestern Montana
Was looking at a trip to Seattle on the Builder in November.

Was a little startled to see roomettes from Whitefish to Seattle sold out a month in advance during the offseason - checked AmSnag, and after submitting a few queries, was even more startled to see no roomettes available on 7 for *every day in the next 3 months* except tomorrow. Same story to Portland, actually - space tomorrow, but allegedly no sleeper space any other day.

Meanwhile there was the usual mix of which coach fare was available on different days.

This looks more like the system not being able to find sleeper space, rather than it actually being sold out every day for months and months (as recently as last week, you could pick any random day in November except Thanksgiving week and find space.)

Anyone have any insight into whether that's the case, and if so, when it might resolve itself?
 
Yep, definitely appears to be a glitch of some sort. I’ve tried looking at both 2 and 27 and even shortened up the route to Spokane just in case it was the split causing an issue. It might be worth a call to AGR to see what’s going on.
 
I had the same thing happen for a trip I want to book to Portland/Seattle on February 17. I think it'll resolve itself, but if you're cynical that it won't, calling an agent couldn't hurt. A forewarning, however, they might be having the same problem and so booking may be impossible, but an explanation may be possible. Sometimes certain parts of Amtrak don't know what's going on with others though.

EDIT: A clear indication that there is a problem is that Amsnag isn’t bringing back any results for the entire month of February for any sleeper on the Empire Builder.
 
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It's 1 of 4 things

1 a genuine technical issue only affecting one route

2 a deliberate ploy to reduce demand on a route so it can be axed

3 sleepers are getting cut from the route either out of season or for good

4 they have genuinely sold out
 
The problem persisted at least until late last evening, but is back to normal today - with AmSnag now showing available sleeper space on something like 28 out of the next 30 days, and Premium booking available again on amtrak.com.
 
Premium booking?

The Amtrak booking page shows all sleeper fares in one "premium" column, after saver, value, and flexible coach fares, with a sub-menu to choose which type of room you want. Yesterday, the whole column was ghosted out, rather than the usual "from $xxx" at the top displaying lowest available roomette fare. (In contrast to Amsnag, which displays only the lowest coach bucket, but a separate line for roomette, bedroom, and family room.)
 
The Amtrak booking page shows all sleeper fares in one "premium" column, after saver, value, and flexible coach fares, with a sub-menu to choose which type of room you want. Yesterday, the whole column was ghosted out, rather than the usual "from $xxx" at the top displaying lowest available roomette fare. (In contrast to Amsnag, which displays only the lowest coach bucket, but a separate line for roomette, bedroom, and family room.)
Gotcha!
 
Looks like the square electron has been removed from Arrow and AmSnag now shows 22 low bucket Roomettes offered in the next 30 days on train 7 from CHI to SEA.
 
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