The Capitol Corridor only has one "bucket" that's the same whether you buy online or at the station (excepting any discounts.) The Amtrak website doesn't mention any specific penalty, but it appears that only the flexible fare would be available (as it states only a full, undiscounted, unrestricted fare can be purchased, and I don't think the Value would count as full or unrestricted.)
"Value" fare is the only option at the unstaffed stations without QT. When I bought my ticket on board a train OAC-GAC, it was the same $15 I would have gotten purchasing online or through the Amtrak app. I don't even know who in their right mind would purchase a "flexible" fare on Capitol Corridor anyways.
You just make the best of what you got. The whole thing is pretty inevitable, unless one manages to pre-depart.True, though what if someone paid cash (i.e. the green stuff) for their ticket (or paid with a now-invalid credit card...for example, I've had to have my AGR card swapped three times over the years: Once for standard expiration, twice for fraud issues)? I really don't envy the conductor who gets into that position and then has to break a $100 bill because the traveler only has $15 in small bills for food.In response to amamba, how many people actually try to carry on two almost full size suitcases and two hand baggages on an NEC Regional anyway? Even if they are being daft enough to try to go to KIN to visit the traveler?
The carry on allowance is pretty much an amount of baggage that at least I could not reasonably drag along myself.
I think the issues will be more with nitpicks like a bag 30" long not meeting 28", which will probably be ignored in many cases, rather than one involving 3 carry-ons and 3 personal items instead of 2+2 and such. How many people really bring on more than 4 pieces anyway? Even on the NEC? For the few that do I don't think it will be that hard to manage.
Clearly if the Conductors are made in charge of enforcing this they will carry some means of effecting the charge, whether it be through some sort of POS device or by simply scanning/typing in the details of the credit card on their iPhone device and having the charge handled at the backend. We don;t know enough about how this will be done, but it does not appear to be an insurmountable problem since they do carry an extremely capable device these days to scan tickets anyway.
Granted that I'm usually in a sleeper, but I don't think I've ever seen or heard of someone being turned away for too much baggage at trainside. The strange situation in RVR I mentioned is the closest I've seen.
What does how the original ticket was paid for have anything to do with how a surcharge is to be paid? I am afraid I am missing something. Yeah, paying by cash raise the usual paying by cash problems. That's life. Presumably there will be some policy to handle situations involving inability to pay.
I can't even fathom how a station agent should go about handling this except in cases with observable huge piles of baggage. I would not expect them to do anything unless checking baggage is involved. If they have a personality disorder they will find some reason or the other to hassle passengers anyway. There is nothing stopping them now.
The amount of space on trains is not infinite either, so there is a similar justification except that the limits are higher as is the case already. One could quibble about what the limit should be, but there should be a limit and it should be enforced.
You can't satisfy everyone. For simply breathing air you would find a few "never agains". They are worthy of being let go. Why would anything on board be a surprise if they bother to understand the baggage rules? If they do not bother then that is life. We don;t have to suddenly become nanny outfit to babysit people through their life's problems.
JoeBas, I don't understand what you wrote. My suitcases (or bags, as I guess I must now call them) get filthy without sizers. Have you ever seen the inside of an old Amtrak baggage car? Or do you mean they get damaged?
What written policy states that a customer is allowed to take any baggage people bring on? The public website states that the carry-on luggage policy is "strictly enforced." I double-checked the Service Standards Manual, and it even tells employees to refuse service if someone is clearly exceeding the policy.
It's a mixed bag (no pun intended). The question of the status of bags of unusual shapes/sizes comes up, which is one possibility (packing a bag to over 50 lbs is doable as well). There's also the question of "what is a bag?" (e.g. multiple smaller shopping bags, a bag of food clipped onto a backpack, etc.) There have been times when I was nominally up to 4-5 "bags", but that's usually one suitcase, one backpack, a carry-out bag clipped to my backpack, and a shopping bag of some sort.
I think if it can fit into the sizer it's OK.
My estimate is that very few will be impacted immediately while many more will be impacted in the future. It's entirely possible I'm completely wrong but the trend I'm sensing reminds me of the early days of the airline luggage wars.
All of my personal travels have been with a single carefully packed rollaboard and a personal item. At first my bags were small enough that even the most restrictive airlines were perfectly fine with them. Over time the rules have changed over and over again so that now my luggage is technically too large for nearly every airline. At the moment the discrepancy is less than obvious so I have yet to be seriously impacted, but over a long enough timeline even my carefully chosen luggage will eventually become a problem.
Are you familiar with the concepts of de facto and de jure? While Amtrak's written rules have included all sorts of restrictions on luggage I've never actually seen anyone trying to measure and enforce such rules on more than a vague and superficial level.
It's a metaphorical figure of speech... not literally "Clean", but rather "Passes their arbitrary and inane sizer test".
That is correct. As I mentioned if any worker tried to enforce the rules in the past, and there were instances where they needed to be enforced, usually management would never back up the enforcement. I think management was depending on passengers to read the rules and honor them without the crews doing it. Probably most passengers did abide by the written rules cause they didn't know they were not actually enforced. So the crews gave up trying to enforce the written rules. So now there is the idea of enforcing the rules to increase revenue. I don't think that it is crazy that revenue could come in from doing that or that the potential figures that I posted are crazy like some think. The problem they might have collecting revenue is that crews generally don't want to get in confrontations, and might be gun shy on collecting the revenue because of past experiences.
