You can't see your train selection until right before you pay!

[me_little_me]

I just noticed that when making train reservations that, unlike airlines and places that have a "cart" you can view, once you select your trains, you can't check if you have the date and right train until after you enter all your credit card info. Now you still have an opportunity then to cancel but then you have to start from the beginning even if one train of a multi-train round trip is in error.

It's especially a big problem since, even if Amtrak tells you there is no train on your selected day and allows you to pick the suggested day (and you do that), it wants to show until you get to the final decision that your days of travel are your input days, not the actual days you chose.

Anyone else notice that or does everyone do it without error?

 

[dgvrengineer]

Yes. The whole website is hard to navigate.

 

[Brian Battuello]

I think I got caught by the website software. I was planning a trip from Boston to Portland Oregon. On both legs (LSL and EB) they said there was only one room available at that price. I got to the pay section (with points) and then decided to go back and recheck the dates. When I got back to the pay screen, it said the price was much higher in points, and I suspect it was holding the same room for me twice, with my points price being the higher of the two. I bailed out, and called Amtrak, and they still quoted me the higher price. Maybe someone jumped in ahead of me.

In any case, I got around the problem by getting a business class seat from Boston to Albany, then picking up a roomette on 49 (rather than 449). Ended up saving almost 14,000 points. God help anyone that isn't familiar with the fine details.

In any case, I'm burning through my points as fast as I can, before they break up the system. It's been a good 50 year run!

 

[F900ElCapitan]

I’ve noticed this too, but was able to find ONE area of very small print where the date is actually shown. I highlighted it in the attached pic. Also I believe if you’re on an overnight train the arrival date is shown with the arrival time (either above or below).

Hope this helps.

 

[Brian Battuello]

I don't have a screenshot, but another reason I went back to recheck the booking was that in the accommodations section, it listed

One Roomette
One Bedroom

For the same leg. I wanted to make sure that I hadn't accidentally booked one for each of us (which would have been nice but excessive). It turned out I hadn't, but by the time I got back, the lower prices were gone.

 

[F900ElCapitan]

Yeah, I ran into something similar, when booking the CZ from CHI to SLC. My wife and I will be traveling with her parents and wanted to do a bedroom suite. There was one room available at a reasonable price and I figured the second would be at the next bucket. So I called to have it all done on one reservation, but when they priced it, both rooms were at the higher bucket. I asked about the lower price and the agent said she couldn’t see that price at all, even for just one room. So I went ahead and booked both separately online (with the two rates) and got the rooms moved so that we have connecting rooms. Then in that process, somehow the price on the second room dropped to the original level (not showed online), so I ended up with both rooms at the original cheaper price. It worked out, but it was a bit of a pain.