# how do i get points for tickets



## BLOND37 (Jul 4, 2009)

- the ticket number got cut off when they tore my tix on the train

-the name wont match cuz AGR had my name spelled wrong

i have the stubs and reservation #


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## chuljin (Jul 4, 2009)

BLOND37 said:


> - the ticket number got cut off when they tore my tix on the train-the name wont match cuz AGR had my name spelled wrong
> 
> i have the stubs and reservation #


1. in my experience, this obliterates only the first 1-2 digits of the ticket number. fortunately, you can still figure out what they were: the first three digits indicate the issue date (001=jan 1, 050=feb 19 and so on). If there remains enough of the issue date for you to read (or you simply remember when you printed it/them), you can reconstruct them. if you need help, just post the issue date and I'll tell you the digits.

2. depending on how bad the misspelling is, they may still post...i don't know how strict the name comparison is. if not, this is something easily done by calling (but still wait the 7-8 days that it would otherwise take to post automatically). give them the ticket number as reconstructed above...they'll see that the ticket says, say, le blond and your account leblond, and get it posted. in the past, i've gotten tix from a metrolink tvm, which prints my correct member# but the name WELCOME/ABOARD and when i called after an appropriate wait, they were quick and handy in posting them.

Good Luck!

Chris


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## BLOND37 (Jul 4, 2009)

chuljin said:


> BLOND37 said:
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> > - the ticket number got cut off when they tore my tix on the train-the name wont match cuz AGR had my name spelled wrong
> ...



i dont know when i bought them but they were PRINTED on 6-27-09

it looks like two numbers are missing cuz the date under the tick number has the month and year but not the day

i dont understand the number system you mentioned above

the name change was Leblond to Le Blond


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## Upstate (Jul 4, 2009)

BLOND37 said:


> chuljin said:
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jan 1 = 001

jan 2 = 002

jan 3 = 003

.....

jan 30 = 030

jan 31 = 031

feb 1 = 032

feb 2 = 033

.....

feb 19 = 50

its the number of days from the start of the year


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## chuljin (Jul 4, 2009)

BLOND37 said:


> chuljin said:
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:lol: I guess I didn't explain that very well. Yes, issue date is the date they were printed. So the first three digits of your ticket number are *178* (because 6/27 is the 178th day of 2009). In fact, it sounds like that '8' may still be visible. To check whether the ticket number is now complete, remember that all ticket numbers have 13 digits*.

I just made up a guess as to the flaw in the name. But howsoever they may differ, the advice is the same, call AGR (7-8 days after travel) and say 'my ticket number is 1780987654321 and it was me who traveled, but the name was misspelled', and if the luck of the ACD draw has connected you to a competent and ambitious agent, it should be no problem.

*For the curious, I've unpuzzled the structure of an Amtrak ticket number:

Digits 1-3: day-of-year of the issue (printing) date, 001-366

Digits 4-7: unique id for the ticket printer (whether quiktrak, ticket agent's printer, commuter rail [e.g. Metrolink] TVM, etc.)

Digits 8-12: incrementing ticket id within that day...seems to be globally unique within that day (i.e. I've printed several tickets from adjacent quiktraks, and the numbers are from the same sequence)

Digit 13: Luhn-10 checksum of the other 12 digits.

A few interesting things: they're wasting 2/3 of the ticket numbering space by letting the first 3 digits only be as high as 366; they expect to have 10,000 ticket printers but only sell 100,000 tickets a day.


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## the_traveler (Jul 4, 2009)

chuljin said:


> A few interesting things: they're wasting 2/3 of the ticket numbering space by letting the first 3 digits only be as high as 366; they expect to have 10,000 ticket printers but only sell 100,000 tickets a day.


It's a good thing then that I don't print all my segments all at one time! Between me and chuljin, that would probably use 95,000 of those 100,000 numbers!


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## BLOND37 (Jul 4, 2009)

chuljin said:


> BLOND37 said:
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yea it looks like the third # is an 8


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## BLOND37 (Jul 4, 2009)

BLOND37 said:


> chuljin said:
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YUP THAT DID IT THANKS YUR THE BEST


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## sky12065 (Jul 5, 2009)

chuljin said:


> they're wasting 2/3 of the ticket numbering space by letting the first 3 digits only be as high as 366


If the first 3 digits represent the day of the year, then why are you suggesting that only going to 366 is wasteing ticket number space? There are no more days of the year possible than 365 and 366 on leap year!


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## Ryan (Jul 5, 2009)

Because you're artificially limiting the number of unique ticket numbers that can be generated - if every position in the 12 digit number (since the 13th digit is a checksum, it doesn't count) could be 0-9, you could have 1,000,000,000,000 (10^12) ticket numbers.

Since the first digit can only be 1-3 and the next two 1-6 you're limited to a number space of:

3*6*6*10^9 or 108,000,000,000

So by constraining the first 3 digits, you're losing 90% of the available ticket numbers.


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## Upstate (Jul 5, 2009)

sky12065 said:


> chuljin said:
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> > they're wasting 2/3 of the ticket numbering space by letting the first 3 digits only be as high as 366
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they could do something like add 366 if a condition is met or leave it as is if not. for example 1-366 for a ticket agent's printer and 367-732 for quick track machines. I don't know how many of each exist but it may save a digit if there are less than 1000 of each.


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