Amtrak’s lounge car complaints

[TinCan782]

This looks interesting...downloaded one of the PDFs but, haven't gone through it yet.

Amtrak’s lounge car complaints are the ██████ of the ██████
“████████████…BAD PIZZA”

"Last June, MuckRock user Conor Skelding requested all complaints Amtrak received regarding its lounge cars over the past two years. Last week, after nine months of processing, the responsive docs finally came in, and boy, those must have been a busy nine months."

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/mar/19/amtrak-lounge-car-complaints/

 

[neroden]

Common themes:

-- Most common theme: food depleted -- Amtrak doesn't bother to stock food on the trains, and it runs out

-- Amtrak leaves expired food in the cafe car

-- Cafe car attendants taking unreasonably long breaks

-- Lack of selection of food

But you know what? I haven't found MY complaint in that list,... might have been after the cutoff date.

 

[Jtbarton]

How about the half-hour long ads they blast over the loud speaker.

 

[neroden]

It's actually pretty pathetic (for Amtrak) that the most common type of complaint seems to be "Amtrak ran out of food".

 

[tricia]

It's actually pretty pathetic (for Amtrak) that the most common type of complaint seems to be "Amtrak ran out of food".

And pretty ridiculous given that most of the food sold on Amtrak has a shelf life of nearly forever. There isn't much on offer in the lounge car that would need to be thrown out if not sold by the end of the run.

 

[KmH]

Regarding the canard - "expired food":
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/19/health/sell-by-dates-waste-food/index.html

. . . Because food dating was never about public health, there is no national regulation over the use of the dates . . .

But according to the new analysis, words like "use by" and "sell by" are used so inconsistently that they contribute to widespread misinterpretation — and waste — by consumers. More than 90% of Americans throw out food prematurely, and 40% of the U.S. food supply is tossed--unused--every year because of food dating.

 

[afigg]

How much time was spent by Amtrak redacting the complaints? They did not just black out names and identifying personal info, but presumably had someone or a review committee go through each complaint and decide just what to and how much they could redact and still meet the minimum legal requirement of the Freedom of information Act. All this, so we can find out what we already know. The attendants often take long breaks and the cafe/lounge cars all too frequently run out of food and beverages.

 

[Bob Dylan]

I don't begrudge the Cafe LSA's their Meal Breaks, most passengers don't realize that they spend 16-18 Hours a day on duty, and work alone. ( I wouldn't want to be down in the "basement" on a Superliner that long!)

The problem with this is the timing of the breaks,for example, at my home Station of Austin the NB Texas Eagle arrives around 930am,the Diner closes soon after rolling out and the Cafe LSA takes his meal break soon after rolling out and doesn't reopen until just before arriving into Temple around 1100am. Thus no food or drink is available between breakfast and the start of Lunch during most of the morning after boarding.

This happens on other LD routes also, it seems that the crews meal breaks could be co-ordinated so that they aren't congregated in the Diner and Transdorm when passengers are wanting to visit the Cafe and Diner.

As for affordable, healthy, delicious food and drink,everything in the Cafe is bought on bid (iePepsi, No Coke!).The food and drink providers will provide whatever the vendor specs, so why not spend a few nickels more and get good stuff instead of the crappy products now sold at high prices?

As we've discussed before, running out of food sucks, but storage space is very limited aboard Trains, so hopefully if and when a new POS system is in place aboard Amtrak trains, the improved inventory control will allow the LSAs to be able to provide what the customers order and the old "they only gave us three" excuse will be history!

 

[MikefromCrete]

Common themes:

-- Most common theme: food depleted -- Amtrak doesn't bother to stock food on the trains, and it runs out

-- Amtrak leaves expired food in the cafe car

-- Cafe car attendants taking unreasonably long breaks

-- Lack of selection of food

But you know what? I haven't found MY complaint in that list,... might have been after the cutoff date.

They probably have a whole separate account for all of your complaints.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

I don't begrudge the Cafe LSA's their Meal Breaks, most passengers don't realize that they spend 16-18 Hours a day on duty, and work alone.

But that opens up a whole different problem... Why on earth does amtrak only let 1 person work in the cafe? On LD Trains the cafe should never close during the day. The meal breaks should be coordinated so that someone from the diner takes over the cafe and everyone gets breaks during the day.

 

[Thirdrail7]

Common themes:

-- Most common theme: food depleted -- Amtrak doesn't bother to stock food on the trains, and it runs out

-- Amtrak leaves expired food in the cafe car

-- Cafe car attendants taking unreasonably long breaks

-- Lack of selection of food

But you know what? I haven't found MY complaint in that list,... might have been after the cutoff date.

They probably have a whole separate account for all of your complaints.

Yes, but this one is pretty legitimate. I've even complained internally about doing something about listing the ingredients. I've been there. I've had ingredients that I'm seriously allergic to slipped into food without notice. It wasn't on the menu, it wasn't in the description. It wasn't listed ANYWHERE on the menu for me to even suspect a problem. Yet, after three bites I knew I was in trouble.

However, this particular item was blended into the sauce and I had an immediate reaction.

Same thing goes for another time. They had the ingredient in the sauce. The reaction wasn't immediate, so I kept eating. Over the next few days, I slowly started breaking out. I looked and felt HORRIBLE!! No one wanted to come near me ,especially when layers of skin just started bubbling and blistering. My children were young at the time and wouldn't even hold my hands when it came time to cross the street. One stated that he'd rather take his chances with the cars (this kid is a complete wise ass) while the other brat asked if I had gloves. Eventually, the medicine dried me up and then you could just peel away my skin or watch it flake away. I looked like a giant fruit roll up.

Hopefully, with marketing being placed under a different umbrella, I may have gained a few more ears. h34r:

 

[neroden]

Common themes:

-- Most common theme: food depleted -- Amtrak doesn't bother to stock food on the trains, and it runs out

-- Amtrak leaves expired food in the cafe car

-- Cafe car attendants taking unreasonably long breaks

-- Lack of selection of food

But you know what? I haven't found MY complaint in that list,... might have been after the cutoff date.

They probably have a whole separate account for all of your complaints.

I know they don't. If they did, they would actually have addressed my complaint about lack of ingredients lists.
You may be surprised but my threshold for actually complaining to the company is quite high, although my threshold for grumbling online that they could have managed something better is pretty low.

Apart from repeatedly complaining about the ingredients list issue, which should have been addressed long ago, these are the only other complaints I've made to Customer Relations:

-- the time they ran out of EGGS. On a train which wasn't anywhere near full. I wouldn't have called Customer Relations except that the LSA actually asked me to; he was mad about it.

-- the time they had salads but refused to serve them to me, a paying coach customer who specifically requested the salad because it was one of only two things I could eat and was medically necessary, so that they could reserve their salads for sleeper customers who didn't want them and didn't eat them. I ended up getting given the salad by a sleeper customer at the same table. This was complete customer disservice by the crew of that train.

-- the time when, after the very late train arrival due to various things (which I did not complain about) and a complete lack of communication about whether I would make my connection (I didn't), they kept me waiting for over 2 more hours in NY Penn telling me that someone would come to address rescheduling my trip, which never happened; I ended up going to dinner, getting a hotel, and calling Customer Relations to discover that they'd made a forced rebooking which didn't work. Simply not competent. Customer Relations was disturbed.

-- the time when on the 13-hour delayed *departure* train trip they made no attempt to contact *anyone* proactively about their missed connections (either before departure or the entire >20-hour train trip); I know this because I met at least six other people who had to wait in line at Chicago to find out what would happen to them. By then I knew how bad Amtrak was about this and had already rescheduled my own trip preemptively.

Notice that two of these are strictly communications issues.

The ingredients list issue is also, frankly, a communications issue.

The other one is, well, "ran out of food" again, and apparently the crews are as annoyed as the passengers...