Amtrak Customer Service

[Rizla Ronnie]

Greetings all.
Folks with long memories may remember our CZ trip from SF in August which had no cooking facilities on board after their cooker broke down before departure causing hours of delay which they never caught up.
The food on board became progressively and rapidly terrible although for the most part we really enjoyed the trip.
We voiced our complaint via email to the customer service department and just wanted to report how, three months later, Amtrak finally responded to it this week with an apology and $400 in travel vouchers as compensation.
This represents about 50% of the original cost for two people.
Of course living in the UK we're now going to have to plan another vacation around using up this voucher !
In many ways the time taken to deal with this exemplifies the problem we found with Amtrak and specifically the Zephyr.
It's a fantastic product but frustratingly badly run and inefficient.
To be fair they eventually got around to handling our complaint long after we'd given up on them.
But three months ? There must be either very short-staffed or have a LOT of complaints to deal with.

 

[SarahZ]

But three months ? There must be either very short-staffed or have a LOT of complaints to deal with.

Probably both.

I'm glad it was resolved for you.

 

[TimePeace]

As I mentioned elsewhere, yesterday I called and booked a round trip BOS - SEA for March.

I had agent Perry, and she was extremely helpful, and we compared several different dates to get the best deals.

In the process of doing so, when we found a deal I thought was good, we booked it and she sent confirmation emails and E-ticket emails. Then if we found a better deal on a different date, we cancelled the first and booked the second, and those emails were sent.

Well by the end of it, I had a pile of emails which I sorted through and printed the statements. But I became hopelessly confused with the E-tickets. So called again today and spoke with Ron, who was also very helpful. He re-sent me ONLY the tickets that were relevant.

From BOS - SEA, I had gotten the best buckets. But for the return, there is one bucket lower, and he told me the best way to check that - which I can do as often as I want. The trick is, not to to look at points but rather, cash prices. He told me what price point would reflect the better bucket, and he said when you see that, call immediately and re-book!

So once again I am very satisfied!

Best to all,
David

 

[TimePeace]

More satisfaction. Called AGR twice today, no hold time, successfully extended my stay in Seattle by 2 days, was refunded about 2,000 points. New reservation now printed. Yay!

 

[Eric in East County]

Question: Does Amtrak offer any kind of waiting list in case accommodations become available due to last minute cancellations? For example, someone wants to travel in a bedroom from LAX to CHI but all the bedrooms are booked. What happens if there is a last-minute cancellation? Can this bedroom be automatically assigned to someone who asked to be placed on a waiting list for just such a possibility? (This sounds like something that Customer Service would handle.)

 

[zephyr17]

Question: Does Amtrak offer any kind of waiting list in case accommodations become available due to last minute cancellations? For example, someone wants to travel in a bedroom from LAX to CHI but all the bedrooms are booked. What happens if there is a last-minute cancellation? Can this bedroom be automatically assigned to someone who asked to be placed on a waiting list for just such a possibility? (This sounds like something that Customer Service would handle.)

Nope, they don't offer that.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Question: Does Amtrak offer any kind of waiting list in case accommodations become available due to last minute cancellations?

Waiting lists used to be a thing but most of the call center folks had no idea how it worked. According to my memory when it did work they would call people in order when a room opened as in a right of first refusal. Other times it was just an email that said a room had become available and whoever acted first got it. Because it was an opaque process you had no way to verify you were actually on the list so I suspect some times my requests went nowhere and other times they would simply say there was no list.