Amtrak's Online Presence

[Barb Stout]

According to GetHuman, the key to "Get to a live person fastest" is to "Just listen to the message, then wait." (I've not tried this, so YMMV.)

GH also notes that the best time to call is 9:15 AM [no time zone given] and that the average wait time is six minutes.

I have accidently done the silent treatment while fumbling for my credit card or whatever information that I think I'll need and yes it works.

 

[BALtoNYPtraveler]

Bratkinson: Do you mean this January coming up? I thought it was the PREVIOUS January. My trips are for late December, with no assigned seats. I saw the sample on the site showing where the seats would be listed on the ticket, and there's nothing there; the agent also verified that there are no assigned seats for my trip. I was wondering if they might do it only for rush hour, or as she said, just the "first few rows..." She sounded unsure, though, since she said in her experience "assigned seats" simply means you are guaranteed a seat as opposed to unreserved meaning you can get on the train but may not get a seat. We all know she was talking about "reserved," though. What a confusing conversation.

I'll be careful to look for this going into the new year, though.

 

[PRR 60]

Seat assignments for Regional Business Class are for trips on or after January 11, 2020.

Amtrak Release

 

[bratkinson]

Thank you for posting the link, PRR 60. I wasn't sure of the date that the assigned seats take effect.

 

[wwchi]

Seat assignments for Regional Business Class are for trips on or after January 11, 2020.

Amtrak Release

yes this is still for Northeast Regional Business Class only - says it's evaluating for other trains at the moment. Thanks!

 

[dogbert617]

What do you think this is going to mean, by suddenly doing assigned seating in any trains with business class? Not sure if that's necessary to do for business class seats on Amtrak, but that's just me. And ugh, probably just another weird idea by Richard Anderson, to implement!

As for someone on the previous page where we talked about the 800-USA-RAIL number, that worked perfectly fine for me last summer when I called the number up to ask to speak to a live agent, and I slightly tweaked my late June-early July travel plans on Amtrak. Once I discovered there was shuttle service from the Saint Mary, Montana area(and near that visitors center) south to both the Two Medicine Lake portion of Glacier National Park, south to Glacier Park Lodge(near the East Glacier Amtrak station), they cancelled a reservation I had made between West Glacier(Belton) and East Glacier without any issues. And I just simply revised my trip to be Chicago to West Glacier, and East Glacier back home to Chicago, and entirely used shuttles to go between West Glacier and East Glacier during my several days out there.

Also sorry it has taken me a little while, to do another update to my travelogue/trip report thread I started on that Empire Builder and Glacier National Park trip! Don't worry everyone, hopefully I will get around to posting the rest of the trip up to when I arrived at the West Glacier Amtrak station by tonight and also this weekend. Hopefully I even can start the posts on what my several days at Glacier N.P. was like very soon, as well. And of course going east on train #8/28, vs. #7/27 going west, the eastbound trip was easily more enjoyable vs. the westbound trip, due to less crowds on #8/28.

Whoever maintains Amtrak web site really needs to keep up with the various problems I and no doubt many others have encountered. Just last week, I tried to book a multi-city trip using points and it can't be done. It would have been a round trip booking except that train #141 to #2153 does not show up as an option from Windsor Locks to Washington, yet the reverse #2172 to #412 does! Go figure. I naturally emailed them and got a 'standard response' - currently the site cannot handle multi-city booking using points...call to make a reservation...blah blah blah.

So I called them. And while on hold, the announcement stated 'for Acela First Class passengers, seats are automatically assigned when booked....' They haven't even changed the voice announcement to indicate that business class seats are now assigned as of January <something>. I mentioned that to the agent and he got a laugh out of it too, and said he'd pass my comment to management.

In short, I suspect there's a major shortage of IT staff that knows 'how it's all put together' and what feeds what, etc. Based on the consistently significant volume of Amtrak help wanted listings for IT, there's a significant turnover problem in my opinion. I have little doubt that much of the IT staff spends their time 'fighting fires' rather than longer term IT enhancements.

I've also noticed that too, that their website can be a little weird at times. Also back in May 2019 when at the time the Cardinal wasn't running with a dining car, they still listed the old Cardinal dining car menu items on Amtrak's website, and didn't yet take that old menu down from their website, after that train no longer ran with a dining car.