Amtrak Guest Rewards 2.0 Coming January 2016

[BCL]

We're 4th now????? That totally sucks. I mean, the comedy school is going to have to change their name, and everything.

3rd actually.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/pdf/cb14-89_pop_table2.pdf

 

[jis]

Given the relative rate of growth of Houston and Chicago, it may not be too long before the two flip.

I was a bit surprised, but not much, when Florida overtook new York State to become the third most populous in the country. I think something similar will happen between Chicago and Houston.

 

[abcnews]

I know there is disappointment regarding AGR dropping the old Zone system for rewards, and the new plan is not quite as generous - but overall I am pretty content with the way they have made the changes. It makes sense. Here is my spin on everything...

1. The old zone system is still in effect until late January 2016. So nothing even changes for some time, you can still book 2016 trips up until January 23, 2016.

2. They could have just dropped the program, they are under the scrutiny of anti-rail segment of Congress that wants to eliminate Amtrak. It puts them in a tough place... So not only is the program continuing, but overall it looks like a decent program.

3. The new award chart favors looking for days with low bucket, etc. In the past there was absolutely no incentive to travel at off peak times, or to book far in advance. It was not an issue - just finding availability was all that mattered. The airline programs seem to promote better rewards at off peak times.

4. I am in numerous airline programs and most offer no viable option of canceling an award trip without a major penalty. And they all are pretty much based on space available. I am not so sure that it was fair to AGR and Amtrak - that you had the option to cancel a free trip an hour or so before departure. I loved that feature, but the new 10% penalty will be a bit more fair to both parties.

5. The zone system was far from perfect... The idea that Cleveland to Chicago was two zones, and yet Cleveland to Miami is only one zone, created an unbalanced reward chart. I liked looking for long routes, and will do a few in 2016 under the old program. But moving forward, it's still a good program. Especially with the AGR credit card being continued. I am looking forward to getting the new card.

6. No Holiday blackout. Sometimes only one portion of a free trip met the "Holiday" criteria, so that is no longer an issue. I like that.

 

[JoeBas]

When I said 4th biggest, I was talking about the city I live in (Houston), not the one you do.

To answer your question regarding fares, looking at Amsnag:

Low bucket to Beaumont (nearest station east) is $14... but your return is the next day, so you're either adding on a $100 hotel, or having someone drive 2 hours to pick you up and take you home (gas and family aggravation of 4 hour round trip).

Without adding a hotel expense, you're looking at going to SAS to the west, or NOL to the east, and just staying out all night (12a-6a in SAS, 9p-9a in NOL).

Low bucket to SAS is $27, NOL is $42, one-way. Both are about a 5 hour drive.

 

[publife]

Re: abcnews "I am in numerous airline programs and most offer no viable option of canceling an award trip without a major penalty. And they all are pretty much based on space available. I am not so sure that it was fair to AGR and Amtrak - that you had the option to cancel a free trip an hour or so before departure. I loved that feature, but the new 10% penalty will be a bit more fair to both parties."

That's one of the things I like best about Southwest - cancellation of points travel right up to the last minute. Additionally, they also have no blackout dates and you can theoretically book the last seat on the plane with points - I say theoretically because last minute flights are often an order of magnitude more expensive than those booked in advance. I often book speculative flights because I know I can cancel without cost.

I will agree that most airline loyalty programs have rather poor availability, and less attractive cancellation policies. I just wanted to point out that the largest revenue based system out there manages to allow redemption at sale rates AND offers free cancellation/modification even last minute.

 

[abcnews]

I am not familiar with SW Airlines, but I agree - those are certainly marvelous features, and unusual for an airline FF Program. And I would say features that encourage customer loyalty.

BTW - At least AGR is only a 10% cancellation fee (although a 14 days out on a sleeper reservation.). And the new AGR allows for last minute travel, although the bucket could be very high in a some cases. But in some situations, the new program allows last minute travel for a reasonable amount of points.

 

[BCL]

When I said 4th biggest, I was talking about the city I live in (Houston), not the one you do.

Sorry - all the responses got kind of confusing. However, I think Houston is mostly just one big suburb. I knew a few people from large cities in Texas, and many said that it's basically houses on one block and empty blocks on another. Housing is generally a place to live and not really an investment. Sometimes it's a large political boundary. You look at other "cities" around the world, and it's just basically an entire metropolitan area that's considered a "city".

However, if you look at population density among cities with more than 500,000 people, NYC is #1 and San Francisco is #2. However, San Francisco is only 47 square miles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population

 

[C855B]

I appreciate the discussion of the low level details which I find useful to be aware of, which in sum make the program and the using it more complicated than I want to deal with. The current way is easy - if there's space, you call the 800 number book your trip. Done, and you don't have to worry about losing points if life interferes with travel.

I notice that several of you saw what I did, several pages ago - the new system punishes using the LD network and tends to favor the corridor trains. Living in Flyover, USA, we're LD customers only, so there you go.

Bottom line for us is the bottom line. For those of us "buying" points with the Chase card co-marketing (and whoever replaces them), the new system is equivalent to a 2.9% cash back. That's versus the 4 to 6% cash back with the current schedule. Somebody said "value", and that's the crux of what is being changed here. The new system is a poor value.

Sadly, we are unable to spare the time to take one last points-only LD trip before the new redemption schedule kicks-in. We'll hang on to the points, of course, and use them next year, even if they're worth half what they were. We won't apply for the new co-marketed credit card when it comes out, and replace our use of the Chase card with another affinity card with a straight, unlimited 2% cash back.

We certainly won't write off train travel completely. However, seeing that we're retired and don't need to travel anywhere we can't go in the car, I suspect our train travel will be cut in half, or more. Good thing we hit our goal this spring of a trip on the EB just to complete our Western LD train "bucket list".

 

[BCL]

I am not familiar with SW Airlines, but I agree - those are certainly marvelous features, and unusual for an airline FF Program. And I would say features that encourage customer loyalty.

BTW - At least AGR is only a 10% cancellation fee (although a 14 days out on a sleeper reservation.). And the new AGR allows for last minute travel, although the bucket could be very high in a some cases. But in some situations, the new program allows last minute travel for a reasonable amount of points.

A lot of people don't like their seating policies. Also - they're not as cheap as they used to be. I remember looking at their "everyday fares" back in the late 90s and it was super cheap compared to the legacy airlines. Now it's not. I remember hearing at one time they hedged with jet fuel futures and it paid off big time when the price of oil went way up. However, that only works for a short time and sometimes they can get burned if they go down.

 

[willem]

Bottom line for us is the bottom line. For those of us "buying" points with the Chase card co-marketing (and whoever replaces them), the new system is equivalent to a 2.9% cash back. That's versus the 4 to 6% cash back with the current schedule. Somebody said "value", and that's the crux of what is being changed here. The new system is a poor value.

As noted elsewhere, it isn't really as high as 2.9% because the redemption will not be based on discounted (AAA, senior, maybe others) fares.

 

[JoeBas]

When I said 4th biggest, I was talking about the city I live in (Houston), not the one you do.

Sorry - all the responses got kind of confusing. However, I think Houston is mostly just one big suburb. I knew a few people from large cities in Texas, and many said that it's basically houses on one block and empty blocks on another. Housing is generally a place to live and not really an investment. Sometimes it's a large political boundary. You look at other "cities" around the world, and it's just basically an entire metropolitan area that's considered a "city".

However, if you look at population density among cities with more than 500,000 people, NYC is #1 and San Francisco is #2. However, San Francisco is only 47 square miles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population

This makes absolutely no sense.

Are we very dense? Not particularly. Do we have the 4th highest population, with no other Amtrak stops in the metro area? Yes.

So from a "Number of people calling Houston their home Amtrak Station" standpoint, what difference does it make if we're stacked vertically, or horizontally?

 

[JoeBas]

Sadly, we are unable to spare the time to take one last points-only LD trip before the new redemption schedule kicks-in. We'll hang on to the points, of course, and use them next year, even if they're worth half what they were.

Keep in mind that you only have to RESERVE by January 24th, not travel - so really you could book now for travel next summer, under the existing rules.

 

[jis]

So I suppose you could travel on as late as December 24th 2016 on a current rule AGR award.

 

[BCL]

This makes absolutely no sense.

Are we very dense? Not particularly. Do we have the 4th highest population, with no other Amtrak stops in the metro area? Yes.

So from a "Number of people calling Houston their home Amtrak Station" standpoint, what difference does it make if we're stacked vertically, or horizontally?

I'm just saying the city itself isn't so much the deal as the larger area. Counting population within a certain border is just a matter of someone drawing a line on a map. I thought I was hearing a joke about Chicago being the "Second City", and I guess that all started with some confusion over what was meant by "4th largest".

 

[JoeBas]

So I suppose you could travel on as late as December 24th 2016 on a current rule AGR award.

Indeed... we've got almost 40k points (within a couple of flowers purchases), so we're taking a western trip we've always wanted to (CHI/LAX/SEA? HOU/SEA? CHI/EMY/SEA? Something) next summer, which we'll reserve in January once we're as sure as possible about our schedule (don't want to have to make changes and risk them yanking the rug out). Then we're likely done traveling on Amtrak, until the next paradigm shift (dramatic airfare increase, devaluation of United MP, return of sanity to AGR, etc).

 

[SteveSFL]

Joebas, you can do San Antonio-Springfield-Galesburg-Sacramento-Seattle as a 2-zone. That's 111 hours total time. If you don't want to spend the night in San Antonio, you can start your trip in Marshall, Tx and it will put you on that routing too. Then just buy a ticket from Houston to Marshall ($37). Of course both of those routings include short bus trips.

Or if you can stomach the new food on the CONO you could fly to NOL in the morning and then do NOL-CHI-LAX-SEA.

All are good 4 night trips.

 

[JoeBas]

I was hoping to do something like "Paid reservation to ELP, 2 roomettes SL/CS/CZ to DEN (1 zone), visit DEN for a couple days, 2 roomettes from DEN to SEA CZ/CS, then fly home from SEA", but for some reason Amtrak doesn't travel between ELP and DEN.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I was hoping to do something like "Paid reservation to ELP, 2 roomettes SL/CS/CZ to DEN (1 zone), visit DEN for a couple days, 2 roomettes from DEN to SEA CZ/CS, then fly home from SEA", but for some reason Amtrak doesn't travel between ELP and DEN.

In the past you could simply ask Anthony to add that routing back again via FT, but that option doesn't appear to be relevant or possible anymore.

 

[JoeBas]

Yeah somehow I don't think Amtrak is going to be doing any flavors for someone who's said they want to maximize their remaining freebie points and then stop riding. LOL

 

[jis]

Just for kicks I wonder if it is possible to do ELP - ABQ - Raton - DEN.The only train segment would be on SWC from ABQ to Raton. Most likely someone at Amtrak would fall off his chair.

 

[Bob Dylan]

The dog runs ELP-ABQ but its not a thru way that can connect with the SWC, just a scheduled Greyhound route.

That's probably not too much wierder than people Voluntarily! riding the San Joaquin./Bustitution between the Bay Area and LAX instead of riding on the Starlight!

 

[jis]

Yeah except that to go from ELP to Denver by train it is like going to the moon and back

 

[JoeBas]

Well, AMTK won't show a valid route from any of the NM or AZ Sunset Route stations to Denver either, nor many of the CA stations... and that doesn't seem TOO farfetched to me.

 

[NorthShore]

When I said 4th biggest, I was talking about the city I live in (Houston), not the one you do.

Ah, ok, thanks for the clarification. Because, you know, "4th city" just isn't funny!

To answer your question regarding fares, looking at Amsnag:

Low bucket to Beaumont (nearest station east) is $14... but your return is the next day, so you're either adding on a $100 hotel, or having someone drive 2 hours to pick you up and take you home (gas and family aggravation of 4 hour round trip).

Without adding a hotel expense, you're looking at going to SAS to the west, or NOL to the east, and just staying out all night (12a-6a in SAS, 9p-9a in NOL).

And you're saying that is a BAD thing?!?!

Low bucket to SAS is $27, NOL is $42, one-way. Both are about a 5 hour drive.

Cool. So, actually, this offers a good comparison for what I'm getting at. Because, you see, a number of the bonuses I have earned haven't been from daytrips, either. Sure, I can go (and have been) to Milwaukee and back. My two entire visits to California included a little corridor riding. And I think that the bonus for riding the San Francisco to EMY shuttle bus is a bit ridiculous. But I have also earned minimum bonuses on rides to South Bend, Niles MI, Bloomington IL, and even St. Paul, MN and Harrisburg, PA. All purpose driven travel to places where I have spent more than just a single overnight. And an upcoming trip I have planned to D.C. should offer (guess!), that's right, 200 points for my $96 ticket - assuming double points season is still on.
So, you see, it isn't entirely essential to have lots of corridor service or daytrips available to benefit by the minimum point system. Shoot, I WISH I could take Amtrak to NOL or SAS at those prices. I'd be doing it often.

 

[PPorro]

This is going to be real simple (I hope?) How much is a one zone redemption from Chicago to Dallas NOW?

I went to compare and got this: "Important:I understand that the points required for my selected travel will be held upon clicking the "Next" button and may not be immediately available if I cancel this trip. I agree that I must cancel my trip prior to departure or my points will be forfeited."

I don't want to lock in for the date, I just want to see how many points?

On the other hand I used the new price based calculator and it's roughly 10,600 points for the trip.

This is one way, one adult, romette. And I'm wondering if I want to make the trip before the "new improved, better" system starts. ;-)

As for all the points and cards talk, I'll wait and see, but I'd hate to see the Chase card go, I use it for everything. Because I get AGR points!