Amtrak Guest Rewards 2.0 Coming January 2016

[tonys96]

What "portions" are you talking about? Most cash+points booking methods work pretty simply. You can buy a $1000 ticket with cash, or redeem 34,000 points. Or you can use $500 and 17,000 points. Or $750 and 8500 points. Or any other possible combination.

The ones I've seen (my credit card) allow one to tap out all the available points, then pay with cash to make up the difference. I didn't see anywhere to specify a combination.

IHG allows you to use points + cash for rooms. usually not a good deal, though, as they do not give you much for your points. Have seen rooms for 15K points or $100 per night, or 10k points and $65, or a variant thereof. Usually better to just bite the points bullet, or the cash bullet.

 

[Kat314159]

Things don't look to shabby from St. Louis either other than losing my flat rate 1500pts to Chicago. (Like when the seat is inexplicably $90 coach and its not the day before). Yes I'll need to plan my redemptions a bit more carefully and I'll spend more points for somethings but being one corridor train away from Chicago seems to be a relatively sweet spot. I think the only better rail times in St. Louis were back in the day when my Great-Grandpa engineered for IL Central. Well before AGR

 

[SteveSFL]

Anthony posted a reply and some info over on flyertalk.

One thing he mentioned was that auto train would be like any other points redemption: based on ticket price.

 

[Orie]

I'm very glad about the removal of blackout dates as well. I'm a young worker... so I work quite a bit. Sometimes 6 days a week. I only really do LD train travel on holidays... July 4th, Thanksgiving, New Years, etc. I understand redemption may be more expensive because holiday fares are more expensive, but it's better then not using the points at all because of a blackout.

 

[seat38a]

Well it looks like the 25% BC and 50% FC bonus are NOT TQP. Wow its getting better and better.

 

[Eris]

It seems to me that some folks who commute a lot, and do high-value points runs, maybe have been previously disconnected with the *extremely* high costs of LD rail travel, accumulating points with short/local trips and using them for long distance.

I got priced out of Family Bedrooms years ago, except that this past year, with improved credit so qualifying for the AGR card, with its bonus points, I was able to accumulate (and purchase) enough points for a couple of trips in the family room. I'm probably back to being priced out, but on the other hand it appears there may be times when two roomettes for two adults (one is a young teen) and one child on my typical run (between Seattle and the Los Angeles area) are about the same number of points as a bedroom/family bedroom used to be, and also times when a bedroom is reasonably pointed as well- I think two roomettes might be better for us these days than the Family bedroom, with my 5'+ tall children.

The rest of our trips we'll probably be in coach, paying cash, just like we've been for years. Ain't comfortable, but still beats flying. At least for now.

 

[NW cannonball]

For me here in MSP, the 2-zone roomette for 20K points was the sweet spot on the old zone system. Anywhere East Coast, West coast, super good deal on points.

But, East Coast especially, that lost a lot of value with EB connections failing last year or so.

On the upside, the old zone system hit me hard for West Coast trips when I wanted to do a 2-3 day layover in, say, ABQ or ELP or MOT or anywhere in-between.

I seldom travel peak summer season (heat and crowding bother me).

Think I'll burn my 40K points soonish going west.

Will definitely NOT quit the program, the points are worth much more than zero.

Whoever said that "loyalty progs" (just another word for "volume rebates") are going away -- hehe notnot. (S&H Green stamps was still alive last time I looked)

Such programs or rebates or whatever continue to make sense for the sellers -- whether airlines, Amtrak, Walgreens, Panera. Not only because of priming customers to choose the "rewards" supplier first,but because the frequent user is "a lot" cheaper to deal with -- say at checkin and boarding. Frequent users of Amtrak, say, know how to find their car, or room, or at AA, know how to get the kiosks to issue a baggage check. Frequent buyers at local hardware store know what's likely to be in stock, don't make unreasonable requests.

That adds up to a lot less handholding at the platform or boarding gate. (Hope Amtrak doesn't have to hire more gate-dragons to improve ridership )

In other words, frequent fliers, or buyers, are cheaper for the seller to deal with, cause they know the rules, what to expect, when to go sit down, when to complain.

Any seller loves a low-cost buyer that has learned the rules of interaction

 

[bryan9]

Received the AGR 2.0 email late last night (Friday, August 28) -- this is the sort of time slot you choose if you're releasing bad news. The question is, how bad? It's hard to tell, since single-leg bucket pricing varies so much dependent on demand, advance reservation time, etc. I just plugged a few numbers in based on our typical travel from Charlottesville, VA (CVS) to Chicago and Colorado. Very tentative conclusions, based on two seniors and the point estimator at http://agr.amtrak.com/rideon/ (scroll down to find the estimator):

* Doing away with the zones may have real advantages for travel that terminates just beyond a zone boundary (e.g., CVS to CHI). Under the current system, a round trip with bedrooms is 80,000 points! Under the new system, based on a round trip departing Tues Sept. 25 and returning Fri Sept 29, the same trip would cost 39,300 points under AGR 2.0.

* Bucket pricing means travel will be more costly on high-demand routes. For a roomette round trip between CVS and Grand Junction, CO in early October, a three-zone trip with current pricing is 70,000 points; under AGR 2.0, the same trip costs 83,076 points. Here, the AGR 2.0 advantage for traveling just beyond the zone boundary (Denver) seems to be eliminated due to high demand on the Zephyr route.

*AGR 2.0 will very substantially raise the cost of exploits possible under the zone system (e.g., CVS-LAX-Seattle-CVS) due to the necessity to use points for each leg. Currently, we could to a transcon for 120,000 points but this would go up to 190,000 based on a sampled October trip.


Based on this admittedly not very exhaustive research, I'd say that AGR 2.0 isn't the unmitigated disaster that I feared it would be, as long as you can be really flexible with your travel dates.

 

[City of Miami]

That's when I got the email too, bryan9. I agree with your conclusions. No more trips on the Cardinal (buckets always too high), but more trips to Chicago via the Capital Ltd.

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

I still have yet to exercise my Buy Points option this year and now wonder under the new system if it is worth buying Points....

 

[Anderson]

I still have yet to exercise my Buy Points option this year and now wonder under the new system if it is worth buying Points....

The answer is probably somewhere between "no" and "hell no" unless you can burn them before the turnover. Right now the cost is $0.0377/point while on non-Acela tickets the value is about $0.0289/point. Put another way, a block of 500 points will cost you $18.85 but only get you $14.49 in benefits (net cost of $4.35). There's a pile of asterisks:

(1) If a 30% bonus comes up and you can file the purchase with a favorable credit card, such a purchase would actually be an effective method of manufactured spending (since the cost and value would be within a single cent of one another before any card-related bonuses. Above 30% the transaction makes sense on its own merits; below 30% the transaction does not make sense, full stop.

(2) Acela awards are less valuable. Don't buy points if you intend to use them on the Acela absent some absurdly good deal.

(2b) Better idea: Don't use points on the Acela. To expound upon this, earning points on the Acela is somewhat improved (read: This Is Oriented To Expense Accounts) but redeeming is...not.

(3) With the cash-plus-points thing, that's a wait-and-see. There are a few ways that may work...for example, with Holiday Inn the "cash and points" offers technically involve a point purchase in lieu of using stockpiled points.

 

[TinCan782]

Received the AGR 2.0 email late last night (Friday, August 28) -- this is the sort of time slot you choose if you're releasing bad news. The question is, how bad? It's hard to tell, since single-leg bucket pricing varies so much dependent on demand, advance reservation time, etc. I just plugged a few numbers in based on our typical travel from Charlottesville, VA (CVS) to Chicago and Colorado. Very tentative conclusions, based on two seniors and the point estimator at http://agr.amtrak.com/rideon/ (scroll down to find the estimator):

* Doing away with the zones may have real advantages for travel that terminates just beyond a zone boundary (e.g., CVS to CHI). Under the current system, a round trip with bedrooms is 80,000 points! Under the new system, based on a round trip departing Tues Sept. 25 and returning Fri Sept 29, the same trip would cost 39,300 points under AGR 2.0.

* Bucket pricing means travel will be more costly on high-demand routes. For a roomette round trip between CVS and Grand Junction, CO in early October, a three-zone trip with current pricing is 70,000 points; under AGR 2.0, the same trip costs 83,076 points. Here, the AGR 2.0 advantage for traveling just beyond the zone boundary (Denver) seems to be eliminated due to high demand on the Zephyr route.

*AGR 2.0 will very substantially raise the cost of exploits possible under the zone system (e.g., CVS-LAX-Seattle-CVS) due to the necessity to use points for each leg. Currently, we could to a transcon for 120,000 points but this would go up to 190,000 based on a sampled October trip.


Based on this admittedly not very exhaustive research, I'd say that AGR 2.0 isn't the unmitigated disaster that I feared it would be, as long as you can be really flexible with your travel dates.

My recent LAX to WAS round trip (TE>CL>CL>SWC) was 120,000 points, under the new program it would be 154,457 points. Last years LAX to SEA round trip (CS>CS) was 50,000 points, under the new program it would be 61,480 points.

The new points "cost" was calculated because when I booked these AGR redemptions, I also did a regular test booking to see what the dollar amount for the same ticket would be. It was those numbers I plugged into the online points estimator. Since I was paying via AGR redemption, the current bucket didn't matter. That's all different now! If my travel is around a particular event, I guess I'll have to take what (bucket) I get.

I also noted from their FAQ on preventing points from expiring: "Amtrak Guest Rewards® MasterCard® cardholders‘ points will not expire as long as your credit card account is open." They mention MasterCard, although no particular bank. Hmmm...still gonna be a MasterCard (bank to be announced) vs Visa as I've seen in some discussions?

 

[C855B]

Welllllllll... I've been not reading this thread, and I should have. This morning I received the e-mail from AGR about the new program. I checked the preview pages, and I now dearly regret buying points during the "win a discount" promotion.

In short, my wife and I are screwed under the new redemption system for our LD travel. Our most frequent (one zone) trip now costs twice as many points, our annual LD trip (two zones) is 25% more.

What we need to do is take a trip before the end of the year to burn what we have, and simply just blow-off AGR points from the Chase card (or BofA, or whoever) as a poor value. We'll simply start using another card as our "primary", one that has a more conventional points-to-cash conversion, and we'll be dollars ahead.

Whoever designed this plan has succeeded in taking us off the train and putting us back in the car. We can't be the only ones, so I can't help but think this is a backdoor ploy to whittle away at LD ridership numbers.

 

[bryan9]

That's when I got the email too, bryan9. I agree with your conclusions. No more trips on the Cardinal (buckets always too high), but more trips to Chicago via the Capital Ltd.

Even though the Cardinal is more convenient for us and faster (CVS-Chicago), we prefer the Capitol Ltd anyway -- the food is actually edible and, at least in my experience, there are fewer delays. --Bryan

 

[bryan9]

Whoever designed this plan has succeeded in taking us off the train and putting us back in the car. We can't be the only ones, so I can't help but think this is a backdoor ploy to whittle away at LD ridership numbers.

This is very sad to contemplate. Perhaps there's a less drastic motive? In my experience, even in peak periods, several sleeping car passengers are using their AGR points -- and, during high buckets, they're taking beaucoup revenue away from Amtrak (presumably). AGR 2.0 strikes me as a way to (1) eliminate exploits possible under the zone system and (2) encourage AGR pointholders to travel on lower bucket routes/dates, thereby creating space that can be sold at a much higher profit. --Bryan

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

I still have yet to exercise my Buy Points option this year and now wonder under the new system if it is worth buying Points....

(3) With the cash-plus-points thing, that's a wait-and-see. There are a few ways that may work...for example, with Holiday Inn the "cash and points" offers technically involve a point purchase in lieu of using stockpiled points.

Thanks for your input Anderson. Since I usually have used Points on long 2 seg runs, this new program will likely wean me off of overnight train travel and back to the dreaded airlines, and only if I deem the trip essential.

But I am curious about the Cash plus Points Program. Maybe there will be some salvation in there.

 

[Manny T]

I use Amtrak for transportation from Point A to Point B. In the process I joined AGR and I accumulate points. When I traveled CHI-MKE I enjoyed the 100 point minimum.

When I have enough points for a free trip, I take it. This is how it will work for me under AGR 2.0 as well, except the 100 pt. minimum is gone.

Forgive me if I'm not familiar with a "points run." Someone mentioned an $11 round trip that earned 250 points (100 minimum x2 + bonus). Is it the case that people would take this round trip repeatedly, over and over again, just to earn some multiple of 250 points? E.g. take this RT 8 times in sequence just to add 2,000 points to their AGR accounts? And now these folks are complaining that this option for gaming the system* is being taken away?

If so, it seems to me that I will now lose this benefit for MY short trips because Amtrak HQ decided to put an end to THEIR abuse of the system. In other words, they ruined it for me!

[*Is it "gaming the system?" I realize they paid for their $11 trips and got the bonus points Amtrak offered. But perhaps the volume of minimums was more than the system could bear.]

 

[Barciur]

Am I calculating this correctly?

My only regular trip is LNC-PHL. I hardly travel by AMTRAK elsewhere. It costs $28 round trip. So that's 200 points per trip. If I took that trip 20 times, that's 4000 points. Under the new system, this will net me 1120 points. Is that correct? Boy, now that's a devaluation of my travel...

 

[PaulM]

Your points are going away

True, but don't panic The new regime is not only a drastic devaluation in point value, oops, I mean dollar credit per dollar spent, but truly represents a dramatic simplification of the system. No more needing to make AGR reservation by phone, no more arbitrary zones, no more arbitrary rules such as the pernicious "published route" rule, overnight sillyness, no paid upgrades, no mixed reward and paid reservations, blackouts, etc.

First the devaluation

It was always difficult to put a value on points because it depended on the zones and current bucket price. But my rule has been that if, a point wasn't worth at least $0.07, I would pay for the ticket. To see what will happen, I used the calculator found at the new website to evaluate a 2 zone roomette reservation costing $2000, which was about the lowest I could find over a 15 day period in January from DEN to ORL (a shortest path route I do every other January).

The result for a non-status member

Price = 2000

Points credited = 4000 (note this is the same as the old regime)

Points required for future travel = 69,000

Points required for future travel under the old regime = 20000

So it takes 69/20 = 3.45 more points. And since the points earned hasn't changed, the devaluation % is (100-20/69) or 71%. If I were to use a high bucket price, the devaluation would be even more drastic.

How did the points disappear? From the calculator you can calculate the points/dollar spent on Amtrak travel and the points/dollar of award travel. In my example these were 2.0 and 34.5, respectively. Dividing the two, the points cancel out and you are left with dollars earned for award travel per dollar spent on Amtrak travel. In other words, 2/34.5 = $0.0579. For my example under the old regime, if I spent 10,000, I earned enough points for the two zone roomette, so the dollars spent per dollar value was 2000/10000 or $0.20 earned per dollar spent.

Now for the simplification

How can Amtrak do it without points and without a drastic change to the archaic reservation system? Simple, treat the dollars credited as a exchange or return voucher, label it AGR. No change in the reservation system required; when you want to redeem the points, simply apply the voucher and legacy calculations apply.

Only a change in the AGR system procedure that credited points is needed. Instead of updating the number of points earned, it updates the AGR exchange voucher with the dollars credited. Of course, a one time program would be needed to create each member's AGR voucher and convert the points to dollars.

What about credit card "Points"

The new FAQS don't mention the points earned per dollar spent with whatever CC is in store. But since there is no change in Amtrak travel earning, I assume the CC will still earn 1 point per dollar. Therefore, the dollar credit per dollar spent would be half of Amtrak travel, namely 2.90 cents per dollar.

Bottom line

While the devaluation for Amtrak travel is depressing, the 5.79 cents per dollar is still makes membership worth keeping. But I definitely will book my Florida trip before the cutoff date.

However, the 2.90 for the CC is something else. I used to even use the Chase MC for paying federal taxes (not a trivial amount since I'm in the IRA minimum required distribution stage) not only for the convenience but because the 1.88% service charge compared to the 7 or 8% return I could expect, made it a no-brainer. It now looks like I need to start CC shopping.

PS: I forgot to mention that the reason I think the "published route" and overnight rules will go away is that that is no reason why you couldn't book a multi-city trip and then apply the AGR voucher to it.

 

[C855B]

... (2) encourage AGR pointholders to travel on lower bucket routes/dates, thereby creating space that can be sold at a much higher profit.

OK, given our travel is usually somewhat flexible, then please advise how to determine when planned travel is on a low-bucket date. For the Western LD trains, there are no low-bucket routes - WYSIWYG. Maybe I've missed the feature on amtrak.com, but I have been unable to determine low fare/high fare date differentials other than just randomly poking dates into the site. Some of the airline sites have a fare calendar page to help with this.

Anyway, I still don't see a positive motive in the restructuring, which from my own little world view seems to punish the LD traveler more. Amtrak has been making a lot of small service reductions lately, some not of their making, but some are, which in total amounts to a "death by a thousand cuts" sort of thing.

 

[C855B]

Oh... I might add that under the old system, we didn't have to pay much attention to date- or route-based differentials, booking was easy and convenient. No more, now we have to work the system to get value for "conventional" (non-abusive routings) point-to-point travel. This, to me, is a reduction in customer service, and a heckuva way to treat your frequent (i.e., AGR) riders.

If Amtrak wants to redeem itself on this, they can do a fare calendar, or other similar concept to let you know that if you left one, two, or three days plus-or-minus your target departure, fares would be $X less, or something like that.

 

[bryan9]

please advise how to determine when planned travel is on a low-bucket date.

I used to use amsnag for this (http://biketrain.net/amsnag/amSnag.php), but it seems to be down... does anyone know what's up with the site?

PaulM said: "Your points are going away," but this depends a lot on the route, bucket, compartment vs. bedroom, etc. One conclusion I'm adding to my list is that the severest impacts are likely to be on people doing former 2-zone compartment trips -- that really was the "sweet spot" in the zone system.

 

[AlamoWye]

I was also wondering about sleeper redemptions under the new system. It use to be (still is?) that when booking a sleeper you got low-bucket fare for the fare portion. Is this going away also when booking sleepers using AGR?

 

[BCL]

Forgive me if I'm not familiar with a "points run." Someone mentioned an $11 round trip that earned 250 points (100 minimum x2 + bonus). Is it the case that people would take this round trip repeatedly, over and over again, just to earn some multiple of 250 points? E.g. take this RT 8 times in sequence just to add 2,000 points to their AGR accounts? And now these folks are complaining that this option for gaming the system* is being taken away?

I remember hearing about members at the AU Gathering in the Bay Area who were taking BKY-EMY, which is about 2 miles, but listed as $7.50 (minus any discounts like AAA).

However, my favorite points runs were RIC-EMY-SFC either on Capitol Corridor or the San Joaquin. I'd done that several times to make Select. Regular price was $11 or $12, but back in 2013 there was the Capitol Corridor weekend 50% promotion with 3 days advance purchase. I preferred RIC because there was more time to track down a conductor to lift the ticket. And the bus runs counted as 100 points too, and the driver made sure to scan a ticket before allowing a passenger on board. So with the discount it was $12 for 400 TQPs, plus Double Days (sometimes overlapped) plus any Select/+ bonus.

Heck - on weekends if the trains/buses stay on schedule, it's possible to get those four segments (400 points) done in just over two hours, and that's with a half hour layover in San Francisco. It was pretty good at the Ferry Building, but the Temporary Transbay Terminal isn't as great a location for that. The outbound buses are also guaranteed connections so they'll wait if the train is late.

The schedule I was thinking of was RIC-EMY (7:15-7:30 on #723), EMY-SFC (bus 7:30-8:00), SFC-EMY (bus 8:25-7:55), EMY-RIC (9:05-9:17). The bus to San Francisco will typically arrive early since there's light weekend morning traffic. So 400 TQPs from 122 minutes end to end.

 

[Anderson]

Oh... I might add that under the old system, we didn't have to pay much attention to date- or route-based differentials, booking was easy and convenient. No more, now we have to work the system to get value for "conventional" (non-abusive routings) point-to-point travel. This, to me, is a reduction in customer service, and a heckuva way to treat your frequent (i.e., AGR) riders.

If Amtrak wants to redeem itself on this, they can do a fare calendar, or other similar concept to let you know that if you left one, two, or three days plus-or-minus your target departure, fares would be $X less, or something like that.

The word you are looking for is "Amsnag". Really, this sort of thing is why Amsnag was programmed.