Room available on website - not in Amtrak Inventory

[jayt]

Have roomette on upcoming trip - family bedroom must have been cancelled as showing one available on website now (have checked daily) and would like to change my reservation from roomette to this family bedroom. Called Amtrak to make changes to reservation and was told it is available, just not between the two cities I am travelling. Called back, and was told it is not available at all, however, I tell both agents it is showing as bookable on website for when/where I want to travel. I was then told that it was a flaw in Amtraks system, and was then told the operator forget to take it out of inventory on the website. Has anyone had this problem before, and what if I went on and booked it, called and cancelled the outbound journey. Would the family bedroom actually be available. Thanks for your feedback on this.

 

[saxman]

Hmm, not sure about the inventory stuff but I would try this if still possible:

Once you see the family room open again, book it right away. Then just cancel your roomette afterwards. Note that you can only cancel a room more than 7 days out from your departure. Otherwise you can't get a refund for your room, however you can use that money to go toward a future Amtrak trip.

 

[AlanB]

Jay,

I just recently encountered something like this and I suspect that I know the cause.

In my case I wanted the Empire Builder from Chicago to Portland and Amtrak.com was showing a room available. I also wanted to use AGR points and everytime the agent tried to get the room, the system wouldn't let him take the room out of inventory. Eventually with the help of a friend and a different agent, we figured out that there wasn't one room that was empty for the entire journey, however there were two different rooms that put together effectively equaled one room from end to end.

In other words, I start out in room #9 but in Whitefish, Montana I have to switch to room #2 because room #9 is sold west of Whitefish.

I'm guessing that you're seeing the same thing with the family room issue here, that one room is open part way and then sold. And at some point between where you start out and where that first family room is sold, another family room opens up on the train.

So bottom line, if you don't mind switching rooms at some point along the way (and know that it could happen at a bad late night/early morning hour) and you can find an agent willing to do the leg work, you could book a family room for your trip. You'll just have to change cars at some point during the trip.

Ps. My guess is that booking that room on line will fail. Even though the computer thinks that it sees a room because of the above quirk, once you put in your credit card number and the computer tries to assign a room number, the whole thing will blow up and you'll just get an error that they can't sell you the room. The agent just sees it earlier in the process than you do via the online system.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Alan:

Ive seen this happen several times during my travels, once to me! In a couple of instances rather than move/juggle pax,especially in the middle of the night (this wasnt an H or Family Room, only roomettes and bedrooms), the SCA, with the conductors OK just let the pax stay in their room and put the boarding pax into the empty room! Is it possible for AGR or Amtrak to change both parties room numbers or bedrooms on the computer resulting in no juggling being necessary for the pax and OBS? Jim :unsure:

 

[daveyb99]

I do not know if the ARROW system is like some airline systems, but if you were on AMTRAK.com and looking at the inventory, that might have blocked anyone else - including a reservations agent -- from seeing that availability. I have had that problem with both paid and award travel before.

I agree to try to book online. If not successful, and the room is showing open, completely back out of AMTRAK.com then call.

 

[printman2000]

Alan:Ive seen this happen several times during my travels, once to me! In a couple of instances rather than move/juggle pax,especially in the middle of the night (this wasnt an H or Family Room, only roomettes and bedrooms), the SCA, with the conductors OK just let the pax stay in their room and put the boarding pax into the empty room! Is it possible for AGR or Amtrak to change both parties room numbers or bedrooms on the computer resulting in no juggling being necessary for the pax and OBS? Jim :unsure:

If they did that to me, I would be pretty miffed. I buy early to get the rooms I want and to board and find out they expect me to use a different room would not make me happy. Course, we always travel as four and get roomettes across the hall from each other.

 

[AlanB]

Alan:Ive seen this happen several times during my travels, once to me! In a couple of instances rather than move/juggle pax,especially in the middle of the night (this wasnt an H or Family Room, only roomettes and bedrooms), the SCA, with the conductors OK just let the pax stay in their room and put the boarding pax into the empty room! Is it possible for AGR or Amtrak to change both parties room numbers or bedrooms on the computer resulting in no juggling being necessary for the pax and OBS? Jim :unsure:

Well in theory it's possible, in practice no.

The problem is that you can't just change people's room numbers without telling them. Especially since it's always possible that they wanted that room for a reason, like a friend or family member across the hall. Further complicating things is the fact that some people could have their tickets already and you'd need to get those back before you could make a room change.

And of course even doing it on the fly like you've seen happen runs the risk of angering a passenger who did specifically want X room for some reason. Most people don't care, but there is always that risk.

So AFAIK, as a general rule Amtrak will not try to change rooms in such a fashion to open up a through room for someone else.

 

[Hytec]

I don't know about Amtrak's reservations system(s), but after 50 years designing computer systems, I can visualize ways that this could occur. The most probable is that the telephone (live person) reservation clerk interacts with a real-time train space database system, That is to say, when a clerk pulls up an available space on their display, that space is immediately marked as unavailable to all other telephone reservation clerks. If you rent that space, your clerk releases the space back to the real-time database, but the space now is marked as unavailable. Though, if you decide not to rent the space, your clerk releases the space back to the real-time database, though this time the space is marked as available for any other reservation clerk to rent.

However, in the case of the online reservation system, you, one of hundreds of Internet users trying to make reservations, are probably interacting with a separate space database system that uses an image of the real-time space database, but is not connected to it in any way. This would be done for security reasons with firewalls to protect the real-time database from those people who love to create havoc with viruses, etc. At any rate, when you make your reservations and rent rooms online, you are updating space availability on that separate online database. Then periodically, perhaps every 15 minutes, the online database is compared with and updates the realtime database, at which time both databases would become the same. If a telephone clerk rented "your space" before the two databases had been compared and updated, creating conflict, you probably would receive an immediate phone call or e-mail to offering correct the conflict.

Please understand that what I've said is purely speculation, but it might be how I would have designed the system(s) back before I retired.

 

[jayt]

Thanks everyone for your help and assistance in my question. Usually have very few questions regarding Amtrak, but it is nice to know I can turn to the "experts" for help, like yourself as I have here. I appreciate the very thorough replies and as always nice to learn something new.

I believe I will just stay with the roomette. Again, thanks to each of you for taking time to reply.