Combining points and cash

MccfamschoolMom said:

I was just reading the Points + Cash FAQ, and it seemed to indicate that Points + Cash could NOT be used for ticket purchases via telephone, and that ticket reservations paid for with Points + Case could not be changed. This could be a problem for me when I try to book next year's California Zephyr trip for the hubby & me, as we found out the hard way this year on the Texas Eagle that neither of us is able to climb into the top bunk in a bedroom. (Maybe in a roomette, but we haven't tried that yet, and would hate to find out that a roomette top bunk was a no-go if we had only booked 1 roomette!) So booking 2 adjacent roomettes seems to be our best option for overnight train journeys, but booking via telephone (to the dedicated AGR number) seems to be the only way to do that.

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Yeah, I just read it and I agree it seems pretty clear points and cash reservations cannot be initiated or touched by an agent other than to cancel one.

My guess is that "points and cash" was done "outboard" to ARROW somewhere in the layers between the consumer UIs and ARROW and so cannot be done or changed within ARROW itself.

This clarifies why @texline's experience went bad when he had to do a modification that wound up being a cancellation. Cancelling is apparently the only action available to an agent on these and it appears an agent can inadvertently cancel these when even attempting to modify. This is a much more serious shortcoming of points and cash than simply the devalued points. If things go sideways during a trip, as they sometimes do, recovering or trying to limit damage proactively could seriously blow up as it did for @texline.

It is another symptom of Amtrak's retaining its paleolithic and brittle core system that I think was coded in cuneiform.

Amtrak excels at alienating customers, but this was a new low.

I tried to book the Coast Starlight LAX to SEA in January - the best time to travel for low fares. I tried to book on a day where the cost was just under $1200 for a bedroom. I initially called on the phone because I wanted to reserve a specific room. The agent said that they could do that, however I couldn't use the payment method of combining points and credit card payment with them, and that I'd have to do it online, then call back using my reservation number to reserve a specific room. Okay...

I then went on the website and put the booking in my "cart" to comply with those instructions , but after clicking on a side link to learn about trip insurance, I couldn't return to find my cart. So I exited the website, logged back in, and now the price was like $150 more, 3 minutes later. Now I may have been born yesterday, but even I know the only reason the price went up, after having been rock stable for several days, is because someone (me) had committed to booking a bedroom on that train.

So I call a "Customer Service" rep to explain and ask about it, and this guy was INCREDIBLY rude and dismissive. So now I don't even want to go.

After I cool off a bit, I completely redo my planned itinerary to leave a day earlier when the fare was only about $900 instead of $1200, even though it was not exactly convenient to do so. I have roughly 2/3 the amount of points to cover the trip value (23882 vs 34688), so I assume I'll have to pay a proportionate amount for the remaining balance via credit card of 1/3 the fare (which would be $300). So after I redo the booking and put it in my cart, I discover that no, points are not applied proportionately, and the remaining balance on a $900 fare is almost $600. Well forget that, so I back up in the booking process to change it from points to just using a credit card payment, and now, sure enough, after several days of not changing, the fare has jumped up to over $1000 because someone (me) tried to book a bedroom on that train.

At that point I was so disgusted by Amtrak being too clever by half trying to jerk customers around that I canceled my plans and I'll do something else with my discretionary time and money.

This all sounds too complicated for me to stress over. I'll look for the lowest fare, and just pay cash, to avoid all the pitfalls described. And when I can use my points to pay for an entire trip, I'll do that...

It is clear that the implementation of points and cash is pretty much an unmitigated disaster.

You cannot book points and cash with an agent. Period. It can only be booked online.

In the case of a disruption, it is very difficult to impossible to proactively adjust the itinerary with an agent. Because the agents apparently do not have full access, at least one person here had a sleeper segment cancelled because of an agent trying to change a cash and points. They were ultimately able to recover after a lot if problems.

My hypothesis is points and cash were implemented as something outboard in the surround outside of ARROW. It gets posted into ARROW in some fragile configuration that pretty much breaks if an agent tries to touch it in ARROW directly. Agents do not appear to be able to work around the issues and it seems to due to the obviously kludgy implementation. It isn't that they do not want to help, it appears that they can't.

It is clear at this point that "points and cash" should be avoided entirely at all costs, the implementation of it is so bad. Buy points to top off. Break trips into separate points and cash reservations at overnight layovers. Do anything except points and cash.

railiner said:

This all sounds too complicated for me to stress over. I'll look for the lowest fare, and just pay cash, to avoid all the pitfalls described. And when I can use my points to pay for an entire trip, I'll do that...

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That's the only way using points makes sense. The entire booking system is set up to frustrate and piss people off, not make them want to travel on Amtrak.

pi314 said:

That's the only way using points makes sense. The entire booking system is set up to frustrate and **** people off, not make them want to travel on Amtrak.

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I sometimes use hotel or airline points/miles + cash to book a room/flight. Understanding that the system leans toward benefiting the supplier, I often can accept the deal.

I have also looked into booking an Amtrak trip using points and miles. Each time, the dollar amount seemed very high considering the number of points required. It was more economical in the long run to use one method or the other. My advice is to save points until one has enough to pay for an entire trip.

CHImdw1522 said:

I sometimes use hotel or airline points/miles + cash to book a room/flight. Understanding that the system leans toward benefiting the supplier, I often can accept the deal.

I have also looked into booking an Amtrak trip using points and miles. Each time, the dollar amount seemed very high considering the number of points required. It was more economical in the long run to use one method or the other. My advice is to save points until one has enough to pay for an entire trip.

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Totally concur.

The point of my post was to two-fold:

1. illustrate both the unethical dissipation of point value when combining points with partial payment. And...

2. Highlight the infuriating fare manipulation Amtrak employs simply for showing an interest in a fare. I had been looking at two specific dates and fares which had not budged in roughly two weeks. Then two different times within an hour I tried to actually book each of those in succession ( because the first one failed).

In each instance I had put a fare in my "cart", but because of the cumbersome user interface on the booking website, which does not allow for ANY path to explore different add-ons, payment methods etc. without having to start over from scratch, I had to go back to the start only to find that I WAS THE REASON the fare was now higher, even though I hadn't actually finished booking it.

If you don't steam forward with your booking on the first attempt and return mere minutes later to redo it, even though you didn't actually procure a booking on the first attempt, the fare will have jumped dramatically on your next attempt simply because you had initiated the booking process.


I'm confident that this is the case, because when I went to check one of those bookings a couple hours later, the price increase for the original fare (about $250 more), had gone back done to about half that amount (about $125 higher), presumably because their algorithm was incrementally figuring out that the booking level hadn't changed.

This happened twice to me in rapid succession for fares that hadn't budged in days.

pi314 said:

Totally concur.

The point of my post was to two-fold:

1. illustrate both the unethical dissipation of point value when combining points with partial payment. And...

2. Highlight the infuriating fare manipulation Amtrak employs simply for showing an interest in a fare. I had been looking at two specific dates and fares which had not budged in roughly two weeks. Then two different times within an hour I tried to actually book each of those in succession ( because the first one failed).

In each instance I had put a fare in my "cart", but because of the cumbersome user interface on the booking website, which does not allow for ANY path to explore different add-ons, payment methods etc. without having to start over from scratch, I had to go back to the start only to find that I WAS THE REASON the fare was now higher, even though I hadn't actually finished booking it.

If you don't steam forward with your booking on the first attempt and return mere minutes later to redo it, even though you didn't actually procure a booking on the first attempt, the fare will have jumped dramatically on your next attempt simply because you had initiated the booking process.



I'm confident that this is the case, because when I went to check one of those bookings a couple hours later, the price increase for the original fare (about $250 more), had gone back done to about half that amount (about $125 higher), presumably because their algorithm was incrementally figuring out that the booking level hadn't changed.


This happened twice to me in rapid succession for fares that hadn't budged in days.

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That’s certainly a serious flaw in the logic of that system. If the system increases the fares before an actual sale is completed, it runs the real risk of losing other potential sales due to the temporarily higher fare.

railiner said:

That’s certainly a serious flaw in the logic of that system. If the system increases the fares before an actual sale is completed, it runs the real risk of losing other potential sales due to the temporarily higher fare.

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I have a different opinion, it would be a serious flaw in the system if the system didn't do a good job of keeping track of how many clients have placed an item in their cart before completing a checkout. As soon as one client places a low volume item in their cart, it must be removed from inventory otherwise you will have a disaster! The question is, how much time do you have until an item in an unpurchased cart is returned to inventory, that is likely what is negotiable?

I have experienced a system (non-Amtrak) that did not manage the unpurchased in the cart well, and it was a high demand item with a published opening date and time. What the system allowed was too many clients to grab time slots (what they were selling) into their cart right at opening time and tried to do the counting and limiting on sale completion, which it kind of failed at too.

When using these online purchasing systems, I usually do not tip my hand by placing an item in my cart until I am 100% ready to fully complete the transaction. Espcially with airline, Amtrak or motel type systems that may have demand based pricing that might be very dynamic.

I do feel for pi314's frustration though with the points+cash item!

UserNameRequired said:

I have a different opinion, it would be a serious flaw in the system if the system didn't do a good job of keeping track of how many clients have placed an item in their cart before completing a checkout. As soon as one client places a low volume item in their cart, it must be removed from inventory otherwise you will have a disaster! The question is, how much time do you have until an item in an unpurchased cart is returned to inventory, that is likely what is negotiable?

I have experienced a system (non-Amtrak) that did not manage the unpurchased in the cart well, and it was a high demand item with a published opening date and time. What the system allowed was too many clients to grab time slots (what they were selling) into their cart right at opening time and tried to do the counting and limiting on sale completion, which it kind of failed at too.

When using these online purchasing systems, I usually do not tip my hand by placing an item in my cart until I am 100% ready to fully complete the transaction. Espcially with airline, Amtrak or motel type systems that may have demand based pricing that might be very dynamic.

I do feel for pi314's frustration though with the points+cash item!

Click to expand...

Yes I understand and accept the reality of demand-based pricing.

What was just ridiculous was the cumbersome nature of the booking process that resulted in me driving up my own fare. Twice.

The first attempt was me clicking on a link about trip insurance. I was merely curious about it, but after that I could not find any way to return to the normal booking process and had to start over.

On the second attempt, I started off by sliding the "use points" button to on, and then, after having no choice but to put the fare in my cart to see the final balance owed, once I realized that using points combined with payment was a complete ripoff, I backed up, turned off the "use points" button and BAM, over $100 increase.

The entire fiasco could be avoided if you could simply call an Amtrak Customer Service rep on the phone, ("Amtrak Customer Service" being an oxymoron for the ages), to just simply do a booking on the spot, hammering out questions like using points, reserving a specific room, etc. I called twice trying to get this thing done. The first one was okay, just completely unproductive because they needed me to first book a room online, then call back to specify the exact room. On the second call, I spoke with just about the most rude, unprofessional phone rep I've ever encountered, so there's that.

pi314 said:

That's the only way using points makes sense. The entire booking system is set up to frustrate and **** people off, not make them want to travel on Amtrak.

Click to expand...

My strategy for the points vs. cash dilemma was simple. I booked the CZ from CHI to OMA in coach for cash. About 11 PM my wife and I moved from the coach car to a roomette paying with points.
The suggestion I have for you would be to ride coach from Los Angeles to Sacramento and change to the sleeper there about midnight. I'm guessing you'll save money (or points) if you schedule it that way. The Sacramento stop is always over 8 minutes while they refuel and even longer on the southbound trip.

pi314 said:

The first one was okay, just completely unproductive because they needed me to first book a room online, then call back to specify the exact room.

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They do not "need" you to do that.

I book sleepers regularly and never book sleepers online because I am picky about roomette location. I call, check which room was assigned and ask for a change if not a preferred one. Only after the room assignment is settled to my satisfaction do I finalize the reservation with the agent.

The only case where you have to book online is points plus cash. In that case, I wouldn't want an agent to touch it at all, given how brittle the implementation of points and cash is and how easy it is for an agent to wreck one, as has been reported here.

Again, it is clear that points plus cash bookings should be avoided if at all possible. Not only is the redemption rate punitive on them, but they are some kind of kludged house of cards once they get into ARROW that can very easily get totally messed up.

Use points. Use cash. Buy points. Split reservations. Do whatever works to avoid points plus cash.

tomfuller said:

My strategy for the points vs. cash dilemma was simple. I booked the CZ from CHI to OMA in coach for cash. About 11 PM my wife and I moved from the coach car to a roomette paying with points.
The suggestion I have for you would be to ride coach from Los Angeles to Sacramento and change to the sleeper there about midnight. I'm guessing you'll save money (or points) if you schedule it that way. The Sacramento stop is always over 8 minutes while they refuel and even longer on the southbound trip.

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Now that is some next-level strategizing! Personally I would rather either book a room for the entire trip or just not go. Something about settling in and then just chilling out. But I appreciate the creativity.

zephyr17 said:

They do not "need" you to do that.

I book sleepers regularly and never book sleepers online because I am picky about roomette location. I call, check which room was assigned and ask for a change if not a preferred one. Only after the room assignment is settled to my satisfaction do I finalize the reservation with the agent.

The only case where you have to book online is points plus cash. In that case, I wouldn't want an agent to touch it at all, given how brittle the implementation of points and cash is and how easy it is for an agent to wreck one, as has been reported here.

Again, it is clear that points plus cash bookings should be avoided if at all possible. Not only is the redemption rate punitive on them, but they are some kind of kludged house of cards once they get into ARROW that can very easily get totally messed up.

Use points. Use cash. Buy points. Split reservations. Do whatever works to avoid points plus cash.

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Good advice. I should have specified - the first call was an attempt to ask an agent to use points plus cash and at the same time lock in a room assignment. Such complicated reservation logistics are beyond Amtrak's capability at the moment. This was before I was aware of the point value manipulation issue that surfaced when I attempted the second booking later on.

pi314 said:

Personally I would rather either book a room for the entire trip or just not go.

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Last month we booked a bedroom on the Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles using points and cash. Working with an agent, we paid for our bedroom from Chicago to Fort Madison using AGR points. We paid for our bedroom from Fort Madison to Los Angeles using our Guest Rewards card. We were able to keep the same bedroom between the two reservations.

zephyr17 said:

Yeah, I just read it and I agree it seems pretty clear points and cash reservations cannot be initiated or touched by an agent other than to cancel one.

My guess is that "points and cash" was done "outboard" to ARROW somewhere in the layers between the consumer UIs and ARROW and so cannot be done or changed within ARROW itself.

This clarifies why @texline's experience went bad when he had to do a modification that wound up being a cancellation. Cancelling is apparently the only action available to an agent on these and it appears an agent can inadvertently cancel these when even attempting to modify. This is a much more serious shortcoming of points and cash than simply the devalued points. If things go sideways during a trip, as they sometimes do, recovering or trying to limit damage proactively could seriously blow up as it did for @texline.

It is another symptom of Amtrak's retaining its paleolithic and brittle core system that I think was coded in cuneiform.

Click to expand...

I don't like these "money-saving" fare systems on any form of public transportation because I find them uniformly too complicated and not worth using, except maybe for long trips, and for those I ask my wife to book any Amtrak points stuff because she has a computer science degree. I serve as her technical advisor on schedules and equipment.

Harmon Shay said:

I don't like these "money-saving" fare systems on any form of public transportation because I find them uniformly too complicated and not worth using, except maybe for long trips, and for those I ask my wife to book any Amtrak points stuff because she has a computer science degree. I serve as her technical advisor on schedules and equipment.

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Straight points are pretty easy. They are worth about $0.0267/point. The cash plus points is significantly poorer and appears to be a sliding scale of some sort.

For me, the points are more than worth it. I have the AGR card and put all my household expenses on it, do points rack up pretty quickly. I only redeem points for big sleeper trips, I do shorter coach trips with cash. I haven't paid for a sleeper trip in years because a great deal of my spending is concentrated on my AGR card.

As a retired IT professional, it is clear by inference that cash plus points was implemented in a kludgy way that is mostly outside the core system and the resulting reservation forced into the ancient core system is some kind of extremely fragile mutant.

The fact that the implementation of points and cash is terrible, as well as devaluing points used in it, should not dissuade you from using straight points. Properly used with the AGR card they can be quite valuable.

UserNameRequired said:

I have a different opinion, it would be a serious flaw in the system if the system didn't do a good job of keeping track of how many clients have placed an item in their cart before completing a checkout. As soon as one client places a low volume item in their cart, it must be removed from inventory otherwise you will have a disaster! The question is, how much time do you have until an item in an unpurchased cart is returned to inventory, that is likely what is negotiable?

I have experienced a system (non-Amtrak) that did not manage the unpurchased in the cart well, and it was a high demand item with a published opening date and time. What the system allowed was too many clients to grab time slots (what they were selling) into their cart right at opening time and tried to do the counting and limiting on sale completion, which it kind of failed at too.

When using these online purchasing systems, I usually do not tip my hand by placing an item in my cart until I am 100% ready to fully complete the transaction. Espcially with airline, Amtrak or motel type systems that may have demand based pricing that might be very dynamic.

I do feel for pi314's frustration though with the points+cash item!

Click to expand...

Okay, I see your point. I would agree with you, if they did only allow you to hold space for a very brief period before you had to commit to a purchase, or lose it back into inventory…

tomfuller said:

My strategy for the points vs. cash dilemma was simple. I booked the CZ from CHI to OMA in coach for cash. About 11 PM my wife and I moved from the coach car to a roomette paying with points.
The suggestion I have for you would be to ride coach from Los Angeles to Sacramento and change to the sleeper there about midnight. I'm guessing you'll save money (or points) if you schedule it that way. The Sacramento stop is always over 8 minutes while they refuel and even longer on the southbound trip.

Click to expand...

The problem with that method, is that unless you get a cooperative and competent agent, who will manually price your transportation charge at the “thru rate”, you may be paying a higher fare by adding two (or more) segments together on a thru train…

Just to put a bow on my fare manipulation odyssey, both those fares that I tried to book and unknowingly caused to spike during the booking process, well they've both receded to the original cost, confirming my suspicion that merely attempting to book them drove up my own price.

And no, I'm not going to go back and procure that travel, because part of the value of a journey is psychological reward, and after mentally resigning myself to not going because of being jacked around and being disgusted with Amtrak's ineptitude, I'm not in the mood. Probably an immature reaction, but a very human one.

pi314 said:

Yes I understand and accept the reality of demand-based pricing.

What was just ridiculous was the cumbersome nature of the booking process that resulted in me driving up my own fare. Twice.

The first attempt was me clicking on a link about trip insurance. I was merely curious about it, but after that I could not find any way to return to the normal booking process and had to start over.

On the second attempt, I started off by sliding the "use points" button to on, and then, after having no choice but to put the fare in my cart to see the final balance owed, once I realized that using points combined with payment was a complete ripoff, I backed up, turned off the "use points" button and BAM, over $100 increase.

The entire fiasco could be avoided if you could simply call an Amtrak Customer Service rep on the phone, ("Amtrak Customer Service" being an oxymoron for the ages), to just simply do a booking on the spot, hammering out questions like using points, reserving a specific room, etc. I called twice trying to get this thing done. The first one was okay, just completely unproductive because they needed me to first book a room online, then call back to specify the exact room. On the second call, I spoke with just about the most rude, unprofessional phone rep I've ever encountered, so there's that.

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I call Amtrak Guest Rewards for my bedroom bookings. They have always been really helpful to deal with in my experience.

scrollmaster said:

I call Amtrak Guest Rewards for my bedroom bookings. They have always been really helpful to deal with in my experience.

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It's been a mixed bag in my experience, depending on who answers. Agreed most are probably okay if you stick to their script, but they can't really do much that you couldn't do yourself except for specific rooms assignments. The last call I made to them a few days ago was about as useless and unprofessional as I've ever encountered.

Every time I've priced a trip with Points + Cash. I find that if I just go buy the points needed first, it's less money.

zephyr17 said:

Straight points are pretty easy. They are worth about $0.0267/point. The cash plus points is significantly poorer and appears to be a sliding scale of some sort.

For me, the points are more than worth it. I have the AGR card and put all my household expenses on it, do points rack up pretty quickly. I only redeem points for big sleeper trips, I do shorter coach trips with cash. I haven't paid for a sleeper trip in years because a great deal of my spending is concentrated on my AGR card.

As a retired IT professional, it is clear by inference that cash plus points was implemented in a kludgy way that is mostly outside the core system and the resulting reservation forced into the ancient core system is some kind of extremely fragile mutant.

The fact that the implementation of points and cash is terrible, as well as devaluing points used in it, should not dissuade you from using straight points. Properly used with the AGR card they can be quite valuable.

Click to expand...

I see what you mean, but you're an IT professional and I think that makes it far easier for you to deal with systems like this. Actually, my wife does the same thing you do with our household expenses. She sold me on that idea and I said to go ahead and do it. It's fine as long as she's the one who deals with all the complications.

We had to cancel a trip because the place we stay in Florida will not yet be inhabitable due to Hurricane Helene in February. We panicked because we had only gotten confirmation from the condo past the window for refund. We are still going down, but not returning at the same time, so we are going home earlier, and needed to cancel. Luckily, the return trip was booked with cash & points and we were able to get a full refund. Lesson learned. We were in a bedroom.