amamba
Engineer
I agree with AlanB. While I respect the opinion of Mr.Jimhudson, I think its absurd to suggest that any pax should be booted from a room on their train because someone else's train got cancelled.I'm with you on this one. I can't imagine being the employee having to call and/or tell someone when they show up at the station that they've jsut been downgraded to coach because someone else from a cancelled train now has their room. That wouldn't go over well at all.Loyalty should count for something, but not at the cost of another customer. Could you imagine being the customer on the SWC who just got booted because the CS was canceled?
I know this is not going to happen so I am not worried. I just cannot see how this would be a good way to handle this situation.
Now, I do agree that Amtrak should be offering consideration to those who are in AGR. As in, if a train gets cancelled or a connection is missed, they should start filling rooms/seats that are still available on other trains based upon AGR status working their way down until they reach non-agr passengers and everything is now sold out out.
And I agree with Cristobal - I never book nonrefundable hotel reservations unless I know for a fact that I will be there. Which means that I do not use priceline/hotwire/whatever when traveling by train.
Back to the situation of the OP, my opinion about compensation does change slightly if they are in the middle of a roundtrip. I will say that it absolutely sucks to be stranded like that - if anyone remember the ill-fated Skybus airline, I actually flew to Columbus, OH on that line the day before they ceased operations and got stuck there, as my return ticket on Skybus for two days later was clearly invalid. It cost me a lot of money to buy a one way ticket home and I still missed one day of work because of the fiasco. When one is in the middle of a trip like that and has to find an alternate routing home - possibly buying expensive one way plane tickets because amtrak is delayed for days - it is a different situation to me than not having yet started a trip and being able to cancel the trip entirely.