wayman
Engineer
The very short version: Amtrak canceled a reservation on me, without notifying me, due to a policy I have never heard of before which Customer Service described in detail and would not back down on. Perhaps Amtrak is correct on this, but the way in which they handled the situation was very, very poor in my opinion. This is long, but I want to include every detail. Read on...
Here's the situation: a couple weeks ago, I made three separate reservations as follows:
176, LYH-WAS (arrives WAS at 11:20 am)
2164, WAS-NYP (departs WAS at 12:00 noon, arrives NYP at 2:54 pm)
2168, WAS-NYP (departs WAS at 2:00 pm, arrives NYP at 4:54 pm)
The thought being (1) I need 600 AGR Rail Points, so my best plan was to take 176 only as far as Washington, then transfer to an Acela for the 500 point city-pair; (2) I need arrive in New York by 5:00 pm Monday, and earlier is better, to get where I'm going; (3) while 40 minutes is "cutting it close" in some situations, the odds of making the noon Acela in this particular situation were reasonably good, barring weather disaster, since 176 originates in LYH; (4) but if I didn't make it in time for the noon Acela, I wanted to be booked on the fallback 2:00 pm Acela while it was still $133 (rather than getting to WAS too late for the early train and having to re-book at a potentially much higher fare).
Anyhow, the relevant detail here, for Amtrak, is: I made two reservations in such a way as it was impossible to take both trains.
Now, as an aside, I've done similar things before -- booking multiple itineraries, far in advance, uncertain of which will work out best for me. It's possible I've never done this in such a way as the multiple itineraries actually overlapped making it impossible to "be in two places at once" -- while I know I've booked multiple return trips from LYH to PHL on consecutive days, far in advance when I had no idea what constraints would be on my trip, those never overlap (being only a six-hour trip).
But I'm pretty sure I've also done this for longer LD itineraries -- booking consecutive days for overnight trains. And I'm pretty certain many people here have done this, in order to lock in a low fare long before you know what date you can actually travel. Maybe I'm wrong about this? If you've done this, please reply with details. I'm curious to know what other people's experiences are.
Now, back to the story. Today I looked up my reservations at amtrak.com. Yes, within the one-day full-refund-to-credit-card cancellation window, but since I travel all the time I was fine with rolling an unused ticket into a voucher, whichever one went unused. And, as said before, I couldn't know which would be unused until getting to WAS (either in time for the noon train, or not).
I saw my reservations on "My Account", all displayed as intact reservations. I wanted to check the arrival times into New York. I clicked on "Tripfolio" for the noon Acela, and amtrak.com displayed an error message. I didn't write down the error message, unfortunately. I clicked the back button on my browser. I then tried clicking on "View/Edit", and amtrak.com displayed an error message. Possibly the same one, but again I didn't write it down. I clicked the back button on my browser. And this time, the "My Account" page had changed: that reservation was now displayed as "canceled".
My initial assumption was that the website hiccuped and canceled the reservation in the course of its errors.
I phoned 1-800-USA-RAIL, asked for an agent, and was routed to a reservations agent "S"; I can give agent names to Amtrak Customer Relations should I contact them, but figured I would use initials here. And I should mention that both agents I spoke with, "S" and "MD", were courteous and clear and, while not "helpful" per se in that they could not resolve this situation to my liking or adequately explain the way in which Amtrak acted in this situation, at least acknowledged that things could have been handled better; I want to be absolutely clear that I don't fault these agents at all in this situation -- it's Amtrak's policies, unclear choices of when and how to enforce them, and lack of due diligence in communicating those policies and enforcement actions, which I fault.
S confirmed that the noon Acela reservation had indeed been canceled -- by Amtrak. Moreover, it was not possible to rebook it at the fare I had originally booked it at ($133) -- I was quoted $207. And moreover, if I wanted to rebook the noon Acela, at the higher price, I would have to cancel the 2:00 pm Acela reservation before doing so. She said this was a hard-and-fast reservations policy. I explained that this was not something I had ever experienced before; more importantly, it was not something which amtrak.com mentioned at any point in the reservations process -- either by forbidding the second reservation from being made or by displaying a warning message that there was a conflict; and most importantly, that Amtrak should never cancel a customer's reservation without contacting the customer, and that as such I wanted the reservation restored at the original fare (and did not wish to cancel the 2:00 pm). I explained why I had made both reservations, and S understood and was sympathetic with my situation and reasons, but said she was not able to do what I asked. She offered to transfer me to a Customer Service agent, and I stayed on the line while she set up a call-transfer.
After a short wait (and again, I want to emphasize that the phone agents handled this call very well -- the wait times were short and reasonable and the agents were courteous, and given what a crazy mess it must be right now at their call center -- with the ongoing weather problems and train cancellations, I was impressed by this), S returned and transferred my call to "MD", a customer Service agent.
I explained my situation to him, and asked him a few questions so I could better understand details S had not been able to give me.
First, I asked whether Amtrak had ever tried to contact me, between the time I made the "double-booked" reservation (December 8th (the noon train); I'd booked the 2:00 pm train two days earlier, on December 6th) and at whatever point they canceled the reservation. His answer: we called you on December 22nd. I asked: do you have a record of speaking with me? I didn't receive this call. His answer: it says we left a message. I told him I never received this message, and moreover had already left home by the 22nd for my holiday. While the phone number on the reservation was my cell phone, not a home phone, I pointed out that this is not a very good way of trying to reach a traveler (this issue, missed phone messages, came up on this forum back during the mudslide in Oregon, as I recall...). In my case, even though it was my cell phone and thus with me, I didn't get the voicemail on my cell phone, for reasons unclear to me. I will give Amtrak the benefit of the doubt and assume they did in fact try to leave a message, though I have no way of knowing that for sure. I asked if there was any subsequent attempt to contact me. His answer: no.
Second, I asked why Amtrak did not try to contact me via email as a second means of reaching me -- especially after not directly speaking with me by phone. They have my email -- in fact, since I made the reservation at amtrak.com, they have a pretty good indication that email/internet is my preferred way of interacting with Amtrak reservations. His answer: we always call customers in such situations; we don't email customers in such situations. I asked if there was a way to send a letter to someone suggesting that they email customers in these situations, and he told me I could telephone Customer Relations but that there was no way to send a written suggestion. I was pretty darned sure that there's a way to write Customer Relations, especially in the event of an unsatisfactory experience, but I didn't press him on this.
Third, I asked him to clarify this "double-booking" policy for me, as I was unfamiliar with it. His initial explanation was quite clearly wrong: "Amtrak doesn't allow a passenger to hold two tickets for the same route on the same day". What if I were traveling from WAS-NYP, and then NYP-WAS, and then WAS-NYP again on the same day, on separate reservations, I asked? Was there a chance the system automatically cancel one of these? He revised his explanation: "Well, if you were doing that, the system should notice it and it should be ok". What if I had multiple reservations for WAS-NYP that didn't overlap -- because I was traveling NYP-WAS by a non-Amtrak route? I pointed out that while I haven't done that for this city pair, I've definitely done this for shorter itineraries (utilizing SEPTA, NJT, or car-rides). He revised his explanation again: "Well, I think the system won't actually flag double-booking unless the times overlap. You can't physically be on both of these trains, because the first one gets to New York almost an hour after the second one leaves Washington". I agreed that this was indeed logical. I did not ask him what would happen if there were two trains, and the first one got to New York an hour before the second one leaves Washington -- still an impossibility without teleportation or perhaps a jet-pack, but not technically an overlap.
Fourth, I asked him whether this was a new policy. He replied that he has been with Amtrak for thirteen years (so, since about 1996, or almost the entire time I have been riding Amtrak) and this was a policy he learned when he was a new employee in training. I observed that I have never read or experienced it before, despite having had similar situations, so I wondered why it seemed to be applied in some instances and not in others. His answer: "some agents don't notice the other booking, or make it anyway to do a customer a favor they technically shouldn't do". I pointed out that I had made my reservations online, and the online system did not indicate any sort of conflict or error or warning, despite having full access to my other bookings; and moreover, someone must have later observed this to be a problem (between the 8th and the 22nd, when they tried to call me), or the computer registered the error at that time (but not earlier) for some reason, which seemed odd. He didn't have a ready answer for this.
But he did explain the reasoning of the policy -- which is understandable. Amtrak doesn't want a passenger to "book low bucket fares" on trains it is impossible to ride, so as to force other passengers to book at higher fares. He stated one reason as that it's unfair to other passengers; an unstated, but also valid, reason was that it might deter other passengers from booking, and then Amtrak loses revenue. Anyway, I agreed the reason was reasonable, but expressed great surprise that the policy was so contrary to my previous experiences with Amtrak reservations. (And so contrary to what I understand to be the experiences of a great many people here. For one, this policy as explained would prevent one from booking the Empire Builder CHI-SEA departing on consecutive days; for two, this would prevent someone holding a reservation at a high-bucket from booking the same route again at a cancellation-released lower-bucket before canceling the initial high-bucket reservation. Unless there are more details to the policy, such as "for some window, you are allowed to hold double-booked reservations" -- such as "up until a week before travel" or "for five minutes while fiddling around on the website" or whatever -- but MD made no mention of this aspect of the policy, and instead claimed that all such reservations were forbidden in all circumstances. I did not press further.)
I moved on to my next question. Fifth, I asked him when Amtrak actually canceled this reservation. He looked it up, and said "this morning". (Sunday the 27th, the day before travel.) I asked if he could see what time the cancellation took place, and he could not. I asked again, just to clarify, if Amtrak had made any attempt to contact me today by any means before canceling the reservation. His answer: no.
Were it not for the bit where Amtrak apparently tried to call me about this on the 22nd, I would wonder if it was my attempting to view the reservation online this afternoon which somehow triggered the cancellation. The reservation was not displayed as "canceled" when I visited "My Account" at about 2:00 pm today -- which strikes me as really odd. If I hadn't clicked on "Tripfolio" but had instead just consulted a timetable or gone looking for the reservation confirmation email, I would have never seen this reservation later displayed as "canceled" on the website and in fact would have seen it as intact, less than a day before travel. What an even worse surprise it could have been to get to the station and then find it canceled... The timing of things is strange enough that I'm still not confident I understand what exactly happened here.
SO ... a very confusing situation, and a very upsetting situation, but thankfully not one which totally louses up my plans tomorrow -- I still get to NYC (barely) on time, and I still get my AGR Rail Points, and I still have the 2:00 pm reservation at the original fare (it was never affected by any of this). But I want to make sure I understand exactly what the policy is, I want to understand how and why it may have been triggered in this instance (when it seems to not be triggered in all instances), I want to see if anyone here has had similar -- or vastly different -- experiences, I want to caution folks that this can happen (since I've never read of it before), I would greatly appreciate hearing from anyone here with greater knowledge than I whether I may have been given incorrect information at any point here by Reservations or Customer Service. Once I am sure I fully understand all of this, I will send a note to Customer Relations, at the least suggesting they should exercise more diligence in contacting customers and improve the online reservation system so that their policies are made clear from the outset.
Here's the situation: a couple weeks ago, I made three separate reservations as follows:
176, LYH-WAS (arrives WAS at 11:20 am)
2164, WAS-NYP (departs WAS at 12:00 noon, arrives NYP at 2:54 pm)
2168, WAS-NYP (departs WAS at 2:00 pm, arrives NYP at 4:54 pm)
The thought being (1) I need 600 AGR Rail Points, so my best plan was to take 176 only as far as Washington, then transfer to an Acela for the 500 point city-pair; (2) I need arrive in New York by 5:00 pm Monday, and earlier is better, to get where I'm going; (3) while 40 minutes is "cutting it close" in some situations, the odds of making the noon Acela in this particular situation were reasonably good, barring weather disaster, since 176 originates in LYH; (4) but if I didn't make it in time for the noon Acela, I wanted to be booked on the fallback 2:00 pm Acela while it was still $133 (rather than getting to WAS too late for the early train and having to re-book at a potentially much higher fare).
Anyhow, the relevant detail here, for Amtrak, is: I made two reservations in such a way as it was impossible to take both trains.
Now, as an aside, I've done similar things before -- booking multiple itineraries, far in advance, uncertain of which will work out best for me. It's possible I've never done this in such a way as the multiple itineraries actually overlapped making it impossible to "be in two places at once" -- while I know I've booked multiple return trips from LYH to PHL on consecutive days, far in advance when I had no idea what constraints would be on my trip, those never overlap (being only a six-hour trip).
But I'm pretty sure I've also done this for longer LD itineraries -- booking consecutive days for overnight trains. And I'm pretty certain many people here have done this, in order to lock in a low fare long before you know what date you can actually travel. Maybe I'm wrong about this? If you've done this, please reply with details. I'm curious to know what other people's experiences are.
Now, back to the story. Today I looked up my reservations at amtrak.com. Yes, within the one-day full-refund-to-credit-card cancellation window, but since I travel all the time I was fine with rolling an unused ticket into a voucher, whichever one went unused. And, as said before, I couldn't know which would be unused until getting to WAS (either in time for the noon train, or not).
I saw my reservations on "My Account", all displayed as intact reservations. I wanted to check the arrival times into New York. I clicked on "Tripfolio" for the noon Acela, and amtrak.com displayed an error message. I didn't write down the error message, unfortunately. I clicked the back button on my browser. I then tried clicking on "View/Edit", and amtrak.com displayed an error message. Possibly the same one, but again I didn't write it down. I clicked the back button on my browser. And this time, the "My Account" page had changed: that reservation was now displayed as "canceled".
My initial assumption was that the website hiccuped and canceled the reservation in the course of its errors.
I phoned 1-800-USA-RAIL, asked for an agent, and was routed to a reservations agent "S"; I can give agent names to Amtrak Customer Relations should I contact them, but figured I would use initials here. And I should mention that both agents I spoke with, "S" and "MD", were courteous and clear and, while not "helpful" per se in that they could not resolve this situation to my liking or adequately explain the way in which Amtrak acted in this situation, at least acknowledged that things could have been handled better; I want to be absolutely clear that I don't fault these agents at all in this situation -- it's Amtrak's policies, unclear choices of when and how to enforce them, and lack of due diligence in communicating those policies and enforcement actions, which I fault.
S confirmed that the noon Acela reservation had indeed been canceled -- by Amtrak. Moreover, it was not possible to rebook it at the fare I had originally booked it at ($133) -- I was quoted $207. And moreover, if I wanted to rebook the noon Acela, at the higher price, I would have to cancel the 2:00 pm Acela reservation before doing so. She said this was a hard-and-fast reservations policy. I explained that this was not something I had ever experienced before; more importantly, it was not something which amtrak.com mentioned at any point in the reservations process -- either by forbidding the second reservation from being made or by displaying a warning message that there was a conflict; and most importantly, that Amtrak should never cancel a customer's reservation without contacting the customer, and that as such I wanted the reservation restored at the original fare (and did not wish to cancel the 2:00 pm). I explained why I had made both reservations, and S understood and was sympathetic with my situation and reasons, but said she was not able to do what I asked. She offered to transfer me to a Customer Service agent, and I stayed on the line while she set up a call-transfer.
After a short wait (and again, I want to emphasize that the phone agents handled this call very well -- the wait times were short and reasonable and the agents were courteous, and given what a crazy mess it must be right now at their call center -- with the ongoing weather problems and train cancellations, I was impressed by this), S returned and transferred my call to "MD", a customer Service agent.
I explained my situation to him, and asked him a few questions so I could better understand details S had not been able to give me.
First, I asked whether Amtrak had ever tried to contact me, between the time I made the "double-booked" reservation (December 8th (the noon train); I'd booked the 2:00 pm train two days earlier, on December 6th) and at whatever point they canceled the reservation. His answer: we called you on December 22nd. I asked: do you have a record of speaking with me? I didn't receive this call. His answer: it says we left a message. I told him I never received this message, and moreover had already left home by the 22nd for my holiday. While the phone number on the reservation was my cell phone, not a home phone, I pointed out that this is not a very good way of trying to reach a traveler (this issue, missed phone messages, came up on this forum back during the mudslide in Oregon, as I recall...). In my case, even though it was my cell phone and thus with me, I didn't get the voicemail on my cell phone, for reasons unclear to me. I will give Amtrak the benefit of the doubt and assume they did in fact try to leave a message, though I have no way of knowing that for sure. I asked if there was any subsequent attempt to contact me. His answer: no.
Second, I asked why Amtrak did not try to contact me via email as a second means of reaching me -- especially after not directly speaking with me by phone. They have my email -- in fact, since I made the reservation at amtrak.com, they have a pretty good indication that email/internet is my preferred way of interacting with Amtrak reservations. His answer: we always call customers in such situations; we don't email customers in such situations. I asked if there was a way to send a letter to someone suggesting that they email customers in these situations, and he told me I could telephone Customer Relations but that there was no way to send a written suggestion. I was pretty darned sure that there's a way to write Customer Relations, especially in the event of an unsatisfactory experience, but I didn't press him on this.
Third, I asked him to clarify this "double-booking" policy for me, as I was unfamiliar with it. His initial explanation was quite clearly wrong: "Amtrak doesn't allow a passenger to hold two tickets for the same route on the same day". What if I were traveling from WAS-NYP, and then NYP-WAS, and then WAS-NYP again on the same day, on separate reservations, I asked? Was there a chance the system automatically cancel one of these? He revised his explanation: "Well, if you were doing that, the system should notice it and it should be ok". What if I had multiple reservations for WAS-NYP that didn't overlap -- because I was traveling NYP-WAS by a non-Amtrak route? I pointed out that while I haven't done that for this city pair, I've definitely done this for shorter itineraries (utilizing SEPTA, NJT, or car-rides). He revised his explanation again: "Well, I think the system won't actually flag double-booking unless the times overlap. You can't physically be on both of these trains, because the first one gets to New York almost an hour after the second one leaves Washington". I agreed that this was indeed logical. I did not ask him what would happen if there were two trains, and the first one got to New York an hour before the second one leaves Washington -- still an impossibility without teleportation or perhaps a jet-pack, but not technically an overlap.
Fourth, I asked him whether this was a new policy. He replied that he has been with Amtrak for thirteen years (so, since about 1996, or almost the entire time I have been riding Amtrak) and this was a policy he learned when he was a new employee in training. I observed that I have never read or experienced it before, despite having had similar situations, so I wondered why it seemed to be applied in some instances and not in others. His answer: "some agents don't notice the other booking, or make it anyway to do a customer a favor they technically shouldn't do". I pointed out that I had made my reservations online, and the online system did not indicate any sort of conflict or error or warning, despite having full access to my other bookings; and moreover, someone must have later observed this to be a problem (between the 8th and the 22nd, when they tried to call me), or the computer registered the error at that time (but not earlier) for some reason, which seemed odd. He didn't have a ready answer for this.
But he did explain the reasoning of the policy -- which is understandable. Amtrak doesn't want a passenger to "book low bucket fares" on trains it is impossible to ride, so as to force other passengers to book at higher fares. He stated one reason as that it's unfair to other passengers; an unstated, but also valid, reason was that it might deter other passengers from booking, and then Amtrak loses revenue. Anyway, I agreed the reason was reasonable, but expressed great surprise that the policy was so contrary to my previous experiences with Amtrak reservations. (And so contrary to what I understand to be the experiences of a great many people here. For one, this policy as explained would prevent one from booking the Empire Builder CHI-SEA departing on consecutive days; for two, this would prevent someone holding a reservation at a high-bucket from booking the same route again at a cancellation-released lower-bucket before canceling the initial high-bucket reservation. Unless there are more details to the policy, such as "for some window, you are allowed to hold double-booked reservations" -- such as "up until a week before travel" or "for five minutes while fiddling around on the website" or whatever -- but MD made no mention of this aspect of the policy, and instead claimed that all such reservations were forbidden in all circumstances. I did not press further.)
I moved on to my next question. Fifth, I asked him when Amtrak actually canceled this reservation. He looked it up, and said "this morning". (Sunday the 27th, the day before travel.) I asked if he could see what time the cancellation took place, and he could not. I asked again, just to clarify, if Amtrak had made any attempt to contact me today by any means before canceling the reservation. His answer: no.
Were it not for the bit where Amtrak apparently tried to call me about this on the 22nd, I would wonder if it was my attempting to view the reservation online this afternoon which somehow triggered the cancellation. The reservation was not displayed as "canceled" when I visited "My Account" at about 2:00 pm today -- which strikes me as really odd. If I hadn't clicked on "Tripfolio" but had instead just consulted a timetable or gone looking for the reservation confirmation email, I would have never seen this reservation later displayed as "canceled" on the website and in fact would have seen it as intact, less than a day before travel. What an even worse surprise it could have been to get to the station and then find it canceled... The timing of things is strange enough that I'm still not confident I understand what exactly happened here.
SO ... a very confusing situation, and a very upsetting situation, but thankfully not one which totally louses up my plans tomorrow -- I still get to NYC (barely) on time, and I still get my AGR Rail Points, and I still have the 2:00 pm reservation at the original fare (it was never affected by any of this). But I want to make sure I understand exactly what the policy is, I want to understand how and why it may have been triggered in this instance (when it seems to not be triggered in all instances), I want to see if anyone here has had similar -- or vastly different -- experiences, I want to caution folks that this can happen (since I've never read of it before), I would greatly appreciate hearing from anyone here with greater knowledge than I whether I may have been given incorrect information at any point here by Reservations or Customer Service. Once I am sure I fully understand all of this, I will send a note to Customer Relations, at the least suggesting they should exercise more diligence in contacting customers and improve the online reservation system so that their policies are made clear from the outset.
