Long Hold Times on AGR Customer Service 800 Number

[C855B]

I've been on hold for 15 minutes. I have never had this problem before. Am I in the queue behind the rest of y'all trying to book before the LD points redemption turns to mush?

 

[SarahZ]

It could be a rush of people complaining about issues during holiday trips.

 

[C855B]

Rep said the biggest issue they're dealing with is the 10% penalty on cancelled trips. Lots of unhappy people they have to talk down.

 

[fairviewroad]

Am I in the queue behind the rest of y'all trying to book before the LD points redemption turns to mush?

Heh heh, I'll be in that queue in the next week or so for precisely that reason. Probably the biggest thing I'm looking forward to in AGR 2.0 is the ability to book sleeper/connection trips online. That said, I'm more than happy to take advantage of the lower redemption rates before the change, even if that requires a

phone call.

 

[Bob Dylan]

fairviewroad: I hope you're a patient sort since booking AGR Awards for Sleeping Cars and trips with connections online is something that doesn't now exist!

Is Amtrak's crack IT Department hard @ work on this since the new AGR2.0 takes effect in 15 days and counting?

 

[willem]

Maybe the new capabilities will be rolled out with success similar to the merging of users' Amtrak and AGR accounts!

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Looks like I may have waited a bit too long to get my trips scheduled under the current system.

 

[tonys96]

Looks like I may have waited a bit too long to get my trips scheduled under the current system.

Well, I hope the heck not! We are planning our August NOL/NYP trip right now....and have to wait until closer to 1/24 so we can get a flavor of air fares from DAL to NOL and from NYC back to DAL....so we can (hopefully) plan our dates around the dates with the lowest arifares.....

 

[George K]

Booked my November trip to NOLA this afternoon on AGR. Waited no more than 3 minutes at about 5 PM CST.

 

[copyright1997]

New poster, but I've been hanging around (in read only mode) for about a year and have been a long time follower at flyertalk. I just booked a last mega trip on the current AGR program:

AGR 2 zone roomette: ALB->ABQ

(to do) ABQ-> FLG coach

AGR 1 zone bedroom: FLG->PDX

(paid) PDX->GPK (East Glacier) Roomette. I was originally going to do this as a 1 zone award, but when I priced this on amsnag (and then Amtrak.com), I decided to purchase it as I was able to do 1 AAA Adult + 1 AAA child + roomette for $244 all in. (Was going to do a 1 zone roomette as it is overnight.)

(paid) GPK ->WPT coach

AGR 2 zone roomette WPT->ALB

65k points total (20+25+20). We will be spending overnights/multiple nights in ABQ or FLG (haven't decided yet, thus the delay on purchasing ABQ->FLG), PDX, GPK. I would have rather broken this up into multiple adventures given some overall time constraints, but with the program change I figured it was now or never. I had about 30k points in my account plus I transferred 50k points from SPG (with the original intention of a 1 zone roomette award between PDX->GPK).

My son and I have done three trips from upstate NY to Florida, and one trip from PGH->TOL (paid) plus 2 zone BR (TOL->SEA) on the Zephr previous to this. Unfortunately with the rewards program change this is most likely the last major adventure of this type.

Anyway, to the point of the OP, I had no trouble getting through to Amtrak rewards earlier this evening. However, the rep said that they have been extremely busy today.

I might wait on the ABQ->FLG leg till until the new program arrives and just use up some of the remaining points that way.

 

[fairviewroad]

fairviewroad: I hope you're a patient sort since booking AGR Awards for Sleeping Cars and trips with connections online is something that doesn't now exist!

It was my understanding that the new system would allow this, since the award is simply based on the price of the ticket. Guess we'll have to wait and see for sure.

 

[City of Miami]

IIRC correctly the online booking capability was mentioned in the pre-announcement leaks and maybe the first version of the announcement as one of the perks that would make this change a good deal for us. Then it disappeared by the official announcement and has not been heard of again.