# Guest Rewards + Starlight



## gyuri_ft (Apr 12, 2008)

Called Amtrak Guest Rewards yesterday.

Me: "We may need award tickets on short notice. Is it any problem getting them?"

Agent: "No, no problem at all"

Me: "We would like to go from San Jose to Portland next week"

Agent: "We have sleepers available, than from Klamath Falls there will be a bus"

Me: "Sorry, we not taking a bus, I want to stay on the train"

Agent: "Because of liability we have to book you through guaranteed connection"

Me: "I don't need your guaranteed connection. I need the train"

Agent (repeating himself): "Because of liability we have to book you through guaranteed connection"

After me and the agent repeating what we want, the agent told me, there is a landslide (and later I found out more about it here and in other places).

OK, I told him, we do not know yet when, but we may go on the short notice and the agent told me, no problem as long as the space is available.

Today it turned out, we have to travel this Sunday. I am calling Amtrak - turns out, Guest Rewards department is not open on the weekends. The Amtrak reservation agent refuses me to switch to her supervisor: "I won't allow you to switch to my supervisor if you complain about Guest Rewards". Finally she switches because I say: "Now I don't complain about Guest Rewards only, I also complain about your attitude". Just in case reserved two tickets on Sunday for under $150 total for two people. After reading all this I can say: as detorriating the service in East or Central Europe is... with this kind of attitude from the railroads our people would be on the street demanding the head of Transport Minister on the pole next to the head of the PM and the country's President.

So how to deal with this kind of attitude? OK. file complain. OK, will get again a useless $50 coupon - post factum. After 15 years in the States we move back to a place where trains are actually more-less RUNNING, more-less ON-TIME. I can wipe my assets with the $50 coupon. I have 110K Amtrak Guest Rewards I guess, I can do the same with them like with the coupons.


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## transit54 (Apr 12, 2008)

This is an issue I think a lot about, mainly because I'm an Amtrak proponent who works for an airline which was founded with the intention of being a "customer service company that happens to fly planes." Having worked for a number of companies doing customer facing work, working for this particular carrier has been a really refreshing experience in part because I'm empowered to do what it takes to ensure customer satisfaction. I don't need to worry about calling supervisors or stepping outside of my bounds except in very extreme cases. There is, in general, a very high level of morale in the company with the exception of one or two airports. And part of our success is due to our customer focused nature.

And so I ask myself, how can Amtrak become like this? I just feel like they just don't consistently deliver good customer service. Many other times they've come through, sure, and in some of my most difficult moments on the rails employees have come through and gone the extra mile for those on board. But I just feel as if more could be done, I just really don't know what. I think, however, there's not going to be a renewed focus on customer service until Amtrak can become adequately funded, as I'm sure that substantially undercuts morale. If the next administration can really make Amtrak something more than a topic that comes up during budget discussions, if they can be heralded as a valuable part of this country's transit network, I think you might see the impetus to improve a lot internally.

There's been a lot of criticism lately about Amtrak's handling of the CS issue. And I agree, they, as Alan said in another thread, "dropped the ball." But every company drops the ball sometimes. Our airline went through a crisis a little more than a year ago, when, in a much publicized incident, we stranded people on planes for eight or nine hours. But afterward, our CEO made a very wide public apology. He took the blame, acknowledged our fault, did his best to try and make things right for those who were affected, and promised it wouldn't happen again. And it hasn't. And a few months later, we received a lot of positive press about how we managed the incident. That's the sort of thing that I'd love to see from Amtrak. I'd love to see Kummant get in front of the media and say, "Look, this is a complicated situation, and a lot of this was outside our control. But we could have communicated with customers better, we could have done things differently, and so we're going to acknowledge our fault, learn from this, and improve, because ensuring that everyone has a great Amtrak experience is incredibly important to us."

Amtrak needs to do more than the occasional cryptic press release - they need a public face, they need to acknowledge accountability, and they need to make sure that their operation is focused first and foremost around customer service, second only to safety.


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## MrFSS (Apr 12, 2008)

rnizlek said:


> This is an issue I think a lot about, mainly because I'm an Amtrak proponent who works for an airline which was founded with the intention of being a "customer service company that happens to fly planes." Having worked for a number of companies doing customer facing work, working for this particular carrier has been a really refreshing experience in part because I'm empowered to do what it takes to ensure customer satisfaction. I don't need to worry about calling supervisors or stepping outside of my bounds except in very extreme cases. There is, in general, a very high level of morale in the company with the exception of one or two airports. And part of our success is due to our customer focused nature.
> And so I ask myself, how can Amtrak become like this? I just feel like they just don't consistently deliver good customer service. Many other times they've come through, sure, and in some of my most difficult moments on the rails employees have come through and gone the extra mile for those on board. But I just feel as if more could be done, I just really don't know what. I think, however, there's not going to be a renewed focus on customer service until Amtrak can become adequately funded, as I'm sure that substantially undercuts morale. If the next administration can really make Amtrak something more than a topic that comes up during budget discussions, if they can be heralded as a valuable part of this country's transit network, I think you might see the impetus to improve a lot internally.
> 
> There's been a lot of criticism lately about Amtrak's handling of the CS issue. And I agree, they, as Alan said in another thread, "dropped the ball." But every company drops the ball sometimes. Our airline went through a crisis a little more than a year ago, when, in a much publicized incident, we stranded people on planes for eight or nine hours. But afterward, our CEO made a very wide public apology. He took the blame, acknowledged our fault, did his best to try and make things right for those who were affected, and promised it wouldn't happen again. And it hasn't. And a few months later, we received a lot of positive press about how we managed the incident. That's the sort of thing that I'd love to see from Amtrak. I'd love to see Kummant get in front of the media and say, "Look, this is a complicated situation, and a lot of this was outside our control. But we could have communicated with customers better, we could have done things differently, and so we're going to acknowledge our fault, learn from this, and improve, because ensuring that everyone has a great Amtrak experience is incredibly important to us."
> ...


Very good comments - thanks for the insight.

And, as in what you say, I saw the AA CEO do the same thing on the national news a couple of days ago, accept full responsibility.


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## sechs (Apr 13, 2008)

So, the original poster here is complaining about his inability to read?

http://www.amtrakguestrewards.com/index.cf...loc=contact.cfm

(I know, they put it at the bottom. But it's not small text!)


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