Combining points and cash

[zephyr17]

I was just reading the Points + Cash FAQ, and it seemed to indicate that Points + Cash could NOT be used for ticket purchases via telephone, and that ticket reservations paid for with Points + Case could not be changed. This could be a problem for me when I try to book next year's California Zephyr trip for the hubby & me, as we found out the hard way this year on the Texas Eagle that neither of us is able to climb into the top bunk in a bedroom. (Maybe in a roomette, but we haven't tried that yet, and would hate to find out that a roomette top bunk was a no-go if we had only booked 1 roomette!) So booking 2 adjacent roomettes seems to be our best option for overnight train journeys, but booking via telephone (to the dedicated AGR number) seems to be the only way to do that.

Yeah, I just read it and I agree it seems pretty clear points and cash reservations cannot be initiated or touched by an agent other than to cancel one.

My guess is that "points and cash" was done "outboard" to ARROW somewhere in the layers between the consumer UIs and ARROW and so cannot be done or changed within ARROW itself.

This clarifies why @texline's experience went bad when he had to do a modification that wound up being a cancellation. Cancelling is apparently the only action available to an agent on these and it appears an agent can inadvertently cancel these when even attempting to modify. This is a much more serious shortcoming of points and cash than simply the devalued points. If things go sideways during a trip, as they sometimes do, recovering or trying to limit damage proactively could seriously blow up as it did for @texline.

It is another symptom of Amtrak's retaining its paleolithic and brittle core system that I think was coded in cuneiform.

 

[pi314]

Amtrak excels at alienating customers, but this was a new low.

I tried to book the Coast Starlight LAX to SEA in January - the best time to travel for low fares. I tried to book on a day where the cost was just under $1200 for a bedroom. I initially called on the phone because I wanted to reserve a specific room. The agent said that they could do that, however I couldn't use the payment method of combining points and credit card payment with them, and that I'd have to do it online, then call back using my reservation number to reserve a specific room. Okay...

I then went on the website and put the booking in my "cart" to comply with those instructions , but after clicking on a side link to learn about trip insurance, I couldn't return to find my cart. So I exited the website, logged back in, and now the price was like $150 more, 3 minutes later. Now I may have been born yesterday, but even I know the only reason the price went up, after having been rock stable for several days, is because someone (me) had committed to booking a bedroom on that train.

So I call a "Customer Service" rep to explain and ask about it, and this guy was INCREDIBLY rude and dismissive. So now I don't even want to go.

After I cool off a bit, I completely redo my planned itinerary to leave a day earlier when the fare was only about $900 instead of $1200, even though it was not exactly convenient to do so. I have roughly 2/3 the amount of points to cover the trip value (23882 vs 34688), so I assume I'll have to pay a proportionate amount for the remaining balance via credit card of 1/3 the fare (which would be $300). So after I redo the booking and put it in my cart, I discover that no, points are not applied proportionately, and the remaining balance on a $900 fare is almost $600. Well forget that, so I back up in the booking process to change it from points to just using a credit card payment, and now, sure enough, after several days of not changing, the fare has jumped up to over $1000 because someone (me) tried to book a bedroom on that train.

At that point I was so disgusted by Amtrak being too clever by half trying to jerk customers around that I canceled my plans and I'll do something else with my discretionary time and money.

 

[railiner]

This all sounds too complicated for me to stress over. I'll look for the lowest fare, and just pay cash, to avoid all the pitfalls described. And when I can use my points to pay for an entire trip, I'll do that...

 

[zephyr17]

It is clear that the implementation of points and cash is pretty much an unmitigated disaster.

You cannot book points and cash with an agent. Period. It can only be booked online.

In the case of a disruption, it is very difficult to impossible to proactively adjust the itinerary with an agent. Because the agents apparently do not have full access, at least one person here had a sleeper segment cancelled because of an agent trying to change a cash and points. They were ultimately able to recover after a lot if problems.

My hypothesis is points and cash were implemented as something outboard in the surround outside of ARROW. It gets posted into ARROW in some fragile configuration that pretty much breaks if an agent tries to touch it in ARROW directly. Agents do not appear to be able to work around the issues and it seems to due to the obviously kludgy implementation. It isn't that they do not want to help, it appears that they can't.

It is clear at this point that "points and cash" should be avoided entirely at all costs, the implementation of it is so bad. Buy points to top off. Break trips into separate points and cash reservations at overnight layovers. Do anything except points and cash.

 

[pi314]

This all sounds too complicated for me to stress over. I'll look for the lowest fare, and just pay cash, to avoid all the pitfalls described. And when I can use my points to pay for an entire trip, I'll do that...

That's the only way using points makes sense. The entire booking system is set up to frustrate and **** people off, not make them want to travel on Amtrak.

 

[CHImdw1522]

That's the only way using points makes sense. The entire booking system is set up to frustrate and **** people off, not make them want to travel on Amtrak.

I sometimes use hotel or airline points/miles + cash to book a room/flight. Understanding that the system leans toward benefiting the supplier, I often can accept the deal.

I have also looked into booking an Amtrak trip using points and miles. Each time, the dollar amount seemed very high considering the number of points required. It was more economical in the long run to use one method or the other. My advice is to save points until one has enough to pay for an entire trip.

 

[pi314]

I sometimes use hotel or airline points/miles + cash to book a room/flight. Understanding that the system leans toward benefiting the supplier, I often can accept the deal.

I have also looked into booking an Amtrak trip using points and miles. Each time, the dollar amount seemed very high considering the number of points required. It was more economical in the long run to use one method or the other. My advice is to save points until one has enough to pay for an entire trip.

Totally concur.

The point of my post was to two-fold:

1. illustrate both the unethical dissipation of point value when combining points with partial payment. And...

2. Highlight the infuriating fare manipulation Amtrak employs simply for showing an interest in a fare. I had been looking at two specific dates and fares which had not budged in roughly two weeks. Then two different times within an hour I tried to actually book each of those in succession ( because the first one failed).

In each instance I had put a fare in my "cart", but because of the cumbersome user interface on the booking website, which does not allow for ANY path to explore different add-ons, payment methods etc. without having to start over from scratch, I had to go back to the start only to find that I WAS THE REASON the fare was now higher, even though I hadn't actually finished booking it.

If you don't steam forward with your booking on the first attempt and return mere minutes later to redo it, even though you didn't actually procure a booking on the first attempt, the fare will have jumped dramatically on your next attempt simply because you had initiated the booking process.


I'm confident that this is the case, because when I went to check one of those bookings a couple hours later, the price increase for the original fare (about $250 more), had gone back done to about half that amount (about $125 higher), presumably because their algorithm was incrementally figuring out that the booking level hadn't changed.

This happened twice to me in rapid succession for fares that hadn't budged in days.

 

[railiner]

Totally concur.

The point of my post was to two-fold:

1. illustrate both the unethical dissipation of point value when combining points with partial payment. And...

2. Highlight the infuriating fare manipulation Amtrak employs simply for showing an interest in a fare. I had been looking at two specific dates and fares which had not budged in roughly two weeks. Then two different times within an hour I tried to actually book each of those in succession ( because the first one failed).

In each instance I had put a fare in my "cart", but because of the cumbersome user interface on the booking website, which does not allow for ANY path to explore different add-ons, payment methods etc. without having to start over from scratch, I had to go back to the start only to find that I WAS THE REASON the fare was now higher, even though I hadn't actually finished booking it.

If you don't steam forward with your booking on the first attempt and return mere minutes later to redo it, even though you didn't actually procure a booking on the first attempt, the fare will have jumped dramatically on your next attempt simply because you had initiated the booking process.



I'm confident that this is the case, because when I went to check one of those bookings a couple hours later, the price increase for the original fare (about $250 more), had gone back done to about half that amount (about $125 higher), presumably because their algorithm was incrementally figuring out that the booking level hadn't changed.


This happened twice to me in rapid succession for fares that hadn't budged in days.

That’s certainly a serious flaw in the logic of that system. If the system increases the fares before an actual sale is completed, it runs the real risk of losing other potential sales due to the temporarily higher fare.