Cost of Using Points

[rjcraig]

Hi everyone,

I'm a new member even though I've been eavesdropping for years. I am using points to travel round trip in a roomette from Osceola, Ia. to Martinez, Ca. next month. It's costing me 100726 points. By comparison, round trip coach points would only be 12376. I called the Guest Rewards 800 number and asked about it. The person I got gave me a sales pitch about coach compared to sleeper which I already knew. She didn't seem to understand my point. That's over 8 times as much! I could see it being 2 or 3 times the points of coach, but over 8 times as much? I'm I missing something?

Thanks,

Bob

Ankney, Iowa

 

[PaTrainFan]

Hi everyone,

I'm a new member even though I've been eavesdropping for years. I am using points to travel round trip in a roomette from Osceola, Ia. to Martinez, Ca. next month. It's costing me 100726 points. By comparison, round trip coach points would only be 12376. I called the Guest Rewards 800 number and asked about it. The person I got gave me a sales pitch about coach compared to sleeper which I already knew. She didn't seem to understand my point. That's over 8 times as much! I could see it being 2 or 3 times the points of coach, but over 8 times as much? I'm I missing something?

Thanks,

Bob

Ankney, Iowa

Hi, are you certain it's a roomette and not a bedroom? Because we don't know your travel time, for grins I picked several random dates in April and found roomettes to be 54,300 points, for each date I selected. It is true that bedrooms are very expensive, over 100K points. If you have any flexibility, might suggest looking at a different date.

 

[rjcraig]

I leave April 6th and return April 14th It's a roomette. 532-4 westbound and 632-13 eastbound. Not really any flexibility on this trip. Going out there to spend time with friends and we have specific plans.

I just double checked on the Guest Rewards website. It is 100726 points for round trip.

I found 54300 points for roomettes also, but that's one way. FYI the one way cost of a bedroom is 119588. It is what it is, I was just curious.

Bob

 

[trimetbusfan]

Hi everyone,

I'm a new member even though I've been eavesdropping for years. I am using points to travel round trip in a roomette from Osceola, Ia. to Martinez, Ca. next month. It's costing me 100726 points. By comparison, round trip coach points would only be 12376. I called the Guest Rewards 800 number and asked about it. The person I got gave me a sales pitch about coach compared to sleeper which I already knew. She didn't seem to understand my point. That's over 8 times as much! I could see it being 2 or 3 times the points of coach, but over 8 times as much? I'm I missing something?

Thanks,

Bob

Ankney, Iowa

I leave April 6th and return April 14th It's a roomette. 532-4 westbound and 632-13 eastbound. Not really any flexibility on this trip. Going out there to spend time with friends and we have specific plans.

That sounds about right. The point rates are a direct correlation to the coach fares. The coach fare for a roomette is over 8 times as much as a coach ticket, so for a points redemption it would be the same "difference".

The "cost" of a ticket in points is 37.5 times the cash fare. For coach, (165 * 37.5 =) 6188 pts, and for a roomette it would be (1448 * 37.5) 54,300 pts.

Btw, 1448 is the highest possible cash fare for a roomette on this segment. The CZ has some of the highest sleeper fares of any route.

 

[rjcraig]

I appreciate this information. I just wanted some opinions on whether this sounded right.

Thanks everyone!

Bob

 

[zephyr17]

Points directly follow cash fares at roughly $0.0267 per point.

The fare difference between coach and sleepers is drastic. Sleepers are not a relatively modest upcharge and never have been.

The points difference is just following the cash fare difference.

The high cost of sleeper accommodation and the reasons for it are the subject of much discussion here. You can find a lot on it if you search, as well as strategies to get the best possible sleeper fares (which will never be cheap). The bottom line, though, is severely constrained sleeper capacity does not generally meet the modest demand for it, a recipe for high prices.

 

[MARC Rider]

The fare difference between coach and sleepers is drastic. Sleepers are not a relatively modest upcharge and never have been.

This might be true now, but back about 20 years ago, I was getting sleeper fares, Washington-Chicago for about $200 - $300 one way, and the coach fare was $70 - $100. So back then, sleepers were maybe 2-4 times the coach fare. And the food in the dining car was better. And you could eat in the dining car even if you were traveling coach, but not always; if the train was crowded and sleepers sold out, they took care of the sleeper passengers first, and it was hard for coach passengers to find the person who was taking reservations.

 

[rjcraig]

Points directly follow cash fares at roughly $0.0267 per point.

The fare difference between coach and sleepers is drastic. Sleepers are not a relatively modest upcharge and never have been.

The points difference is just following the cash fare difference.

The high cost of sleeper accommodation and the reasons for it are the subject of much discussion here. You can find a lot on it if you search, as well as strategies to get the best possible sleeper fares (which will never be cheap). The bottom line, though, is severely constrained sleeper capacity does not generally meet the modest demand for it, a recipe for high prices.

Hi zephr17:

You say modest demand for sleeper accommodations. I thought sleeper demand was high, but shortage of cars along with high demand was what was driving up sleeper rates. Thanks for your suggestions.

Bob

 

[Gary Moline]

I am a AGR Rewards member and I usually buy points when there is a sale. The last sale had a 50% bonus that I took advantage of. Does anyone have a spreadsheet or a way to keep track of the actual value of your points? Added to the equation is a 5% bonus that you get when you use points to book a trip. Also difficult to determine is the point credit you get each month for using your AGR credit card. There are so many variables in trying to determine how much you are spending when you use points. Then again, it may not be worth the trouble.

 

[zephyr17]

Hi zephr17:

You say modest demand for sleeper accommodations. I thought sleeper demand was high, but shortage of cars along with high demand was what was driving up sleeper rates. Thanks for your suggestions.

Bob

In the general scheme of things, demand for sleepers as an absolute is small. In fact, there are a whole lot of people who are not aware one can still travel long distance in a sleeper. They think that had gone the way of the stagecoach, a charming artifact of the past. The market pretty much consists of a small band of die-hard rail travelers, people who will not or cannot fly, and some curious who want to try out rail travel.

On the California Zephyr serving major markets at the Bay Area, Denver, and Chicago, there are a total of 26-32 roomettes (depending on how many roomettes in the transdorm are released to revenue inventory, 26 is the roomette count in 2 standard sleepers), 10 Bedrooms, 2 Family Rooms, and 2 Accessible Rooms. That is a total capacity of 70 to 82 adults and 4 small children if every room was booked to full occupancy, which never happens, there are always a good number of rooms with only one passenger.

There are 40-46 accomodations available each day, total. Now think about how many First Class airline seats are available each day SFO/OAK/SJC-ORD/MDW, DEN-ORD/MDW, DEN-SFO/OAK/SJC. An offhand guess is that number would be bigger than 46, probably a lot bigger than 46.

It doesn't take huge demand to fill those 46 daily accommodations. Pretty modest demand will do it and does.

Expanding capacity to meet that modest demand would allow sleeper prices to fall from their current stratospheric levels and would encourage the curious, many of whom are likely deterred from following through once they see what the prices are. It could serve to expand the market. Although gaining consistency in customer service and improving on time performance and reliability would also be necessary to retain those new customers.

 

[zephyr17]

I am a AGR Rewards member and I usually buy points when there is a sale. The last sale had a 50% bonus that I took advantage of. Does anyone have a spreadsheet or a way to keep track of the actual value of your points? Added to the equation is a 5% bonus that you get when you use points to book a trip. Also difficult to determine is the point credit you get each month for using your AGR credit card. There are so many variables in trying to determine how much you are spending when you use points. Then again, it may not be worth the trouble.

$0.0267/AGR point is a pretty solid number for straight redemption for travel. I usually check point value versus cash fare before redeeming and that value is quite consistent. It appears that in some absolute peak travel periods, like the holidays, when they may delvalue the points. Also Points+Cash very significantly devalues points, on sliding scale from bad to terrible depending on the cash amount put up.

It is a good working number, though it does not factor in the 5% rebate from cardholders. Nor does it account for losing the 10% senior discount on rail fare.

So, for each dollar spent on ordinary purchases you get a bit less than 3 cents in Amtrak travel. When buying Amtrak tickets with the preferred card, you get about 8 cents per dollar spend for the 3x Antrak benefit from FNBO, then the regular 2x, about 5 cents, from AGR, so 13 cents per dollar.

In terms of valuing my own inventory of points, I'd just multiply them by 0.0267 and be done with it. That'll give me a decent number to work with, though I haven't bothered. I have enough to pretty much do what I want to do, since I put all my monthly expenses I can on the FNBO card.

 

[rjcraig]

These are all interesting points I have never thought of. The math is a little confusing to me, but that's just me. Speaking of buying points, last fall I bought 70,000 points for $1800. That included 20,000 bonus points. The funny thing is, the website said you could only do this once every 12 months. After about a month I thought I'd try again, and the webpage let me do it again. I was pretty proud of myself for pulling that one off. I hope someone from Amtrak doesn't read this and try to take back my second purchase!

Bob

 

[zephyr17]

These are all interesting points I have never thought of. The math is a little confusing to me, but that's just me. Speaking of buying points, last fall I bought 70,000 points for $1800. That included 20,000 bonus points. The funny thing is, the website said you could only do this once every 12 months. After about a month I thought I'd try again, and the webpage let me do it again. I was pretty proud of myself for pulling that one off. I hope someone from Amtrak doesn't read this and try to take back my second purchase!

Bob

Considering the 20K bonus, you bought each point that is worth $0.0267 for $0.0257. You made a 1/100th of a cent profit on each of those points.

In other words, your $1800 bought $1869 worth of Amtrak travel redemption.

Well played.

 

[rjcraig]

Thank you, zephyr17