Booking with points on Southwest Chief?

Eric in East County · Dec 27, 2023

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know about how many Amtrak Guest Reward (AGR) points it takes to cover the cost of a Southwest Chief passage in coach from Los Angeles to Chicago? How many AGR points would it take to make this same trip in a roomette? Or in a bedroom? (What with the cost of these accommodations constantly going up, this might be hard to nail down at any given time.) Has anyone ever tried to use a combination of cash and AGR points for the same trip and same accommodations? For example, booking a passage from LA to Kansas City paying cash and then booking the rest of the trip (Kansas City to Chicago) on the same train and in the same accommodations using AGR points? (If the booking was done far enough in advance and you worked with a live agent it seems reasonable that it could be done.)

AmtrakBlue · Dec 28, 2023

You can see the AGR points cost on the website. There’s a toggle to switch between dollars & points.

You should have no trouble booking cash or points to an intermediate station then booking with the other for the remainder of the trip. It’s not like you’re going to miss a connection.

You will need to get an agent involved to make sure you stay in the same room.

Just make sure your cash ticket(s) are scanned so you get your points.

railiner · Dec 28, 2023

If you break up a thru booking that way, it may cost somewhat more. However, in some rare cases, it may actually cost less…

Eric in East County · Oct 19, 2024

This morning, we called Amtrak Guest Rewards and, working with an agent, booked a bedroom from Chicago to LA on SWC 3 using a combination of AGR points and cash. We used points to pay for the bedroom from Chicago to Fort Madison. We used our AGR card to pay for the bedroom from Fort Madison to LA. There was no problem keeping the same bedroom from one reservation to another. This was the first time we’ve tried doing this and it worked out fine, thanks to our having a competent agent who was able to make the necessary arrangements.

zephyr17 · Oct 19, 2024

Eric in East County said:
This morning, we called Amtrak Guest Rewards and, working with an agent, booked a bedroom from Chicago to LA on SWC 3 using a combination of AGR points and cash. We used points to pay for the bedroom from Chicago to Fort Madison. We used our AGR card to pay for the bedroom from Fort Madison to LA. There was no problem keeping the same bedroom from one reservation to another. This was the first time we’ve tried doing this and it worked out fine, thanks to our having a competent agent who was able to make the necessary arrangements.

That is a great solution and a good workaround to avoid the serious issues that have come to light with points and cash. Kudo to you and the agent for working that one out.

Eric in East County · Oct 19, 2024

zephyr17 said:
That is a great solution and a good workaround to avoid the serious issues that have come to light with points and cash. Kudo to you and the agent for working that one out.

zephry17,

We’d actually run this idea passed you in a different thread earlier this year. You opined that, in theory, it should work, provided we dealt with a live agent. Again, this was the first time we attempted it and weren’t sure if we could pull it off. Much our delight, the AGR woman who assisted us was able to make it happen.

railiner · Oct 19, 2024

Eric in East County said:
This morning, we called Amtrak Guest Rewards and, working with an agent, booked a bedroom from Chicago to LA on SWC 3 using a combination of AGR points and cash. We used points to pay for the bedroom from Chicago to Fort Madison. We used our AGR card to pay for the bedroom from Fort Madison to LA. There was no problem keeping the same bedroom from one reservation to another. This was the first time we’ve tried doing this and it worked out fine, thanks to our having a competent agent who was able to make the necessary arrangements.

No problem keeping the same room from one reservation to another, but....did you pay the same fare by splitting the trip as you would have, with one thru fare?

Eric in East County · Oct 19, 2024

railiner said:
No problem keeping the same room from one reservation to another, but....did you pay the same fare by splitting the trip as you would have, with one thru fare?

We have no idea what the thru fare would have been and don't particularly care. Our main concern was to have a bedroom reservation in the 330 car from Chicago to LA and only by dealing with a live agent could that be accomplished with any degree of certainty. If by using our AGR points we saved a few bucks then it was worth it. We were not about become ensnared in the Points + Cash quagmire.

railiner · Oct 20, 2024

Eric in East County said:
We have no idea what the thru fare would have been and don't particularly care. Our main concern was to have a bedroom reservation in the 330 car from Chicago to LA and only by dealing with a live agent could that be accomplished with any degree of certainty. If by using our AGR points we saved a few bucks then it was worth it. We were not about become ensnared in the Points + Cash quagmire.

It would seem to me that you were concerned somewhat with saving some money by using what points you had available, so why not try to get the thru fare as well? A good agent could also manually price your trip to give you that also, if the thru fare turned out to be lower than adding the two segments....

Eric in East County · Oct 20, 2024

railiner said:
It would seem to me that you were concerned somewhat with saving some money by using what points you had available, so why not try to get the thru fare as well? A good agent could also manually price your trip to give you that also, if the thru fare turned out to be lower than adding the two segments....

Before you brought this to our attention, we never really gave much thought to thru fares. (We also used our AGR points to pay for our connecting trains to LA and to Chicago so that obviously saved us some money.) Over time, we’ve accumulated what is for us a substantial number of points which we wanted to make use of, even though there weren’t enough of them to pay for the entire trip from Chicago to LA. Also, we were curious to see if we could used both points and cash for the same LD passage while still keeping the same bedroom, and without having to resort to the Points + Cash program. The people who are clever in figuring out fares and the best way to make use of AGR points can probably come up with an answer as to if we saved anything by doing it the way we did.

Booking with points on Southwest Chief?

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