FAR-ATL...2 zone or 3 zone?

[Tumbleweed]

Would FAR-ATL be a 2 zone or 3 zone since you go from the Central to the Eastern zone and back to the Central zone?

 

[Tumbleweed]

Hmmmm...or maybe it could be a one zone since both departure and destination stations are in the same zone?

 

[Guest]

FAR-ATL is an AGR two-zone trip. I've redeemed a MSP-ATL two-zone in the past.

 

[Ispolkom]

I'd bet that there's a 90-95% chance that it would a two-zone trip, and a 5-10% chance that it would be a one-zone.

 

[KrazyKoala]

They take in account for what zone you started in, and which one you end it. They are both central so it would be a one-zone. I do believe it makes a difference from doing this online compared to over the phone. If Amtrak wants to consider it 2-Zone for the reason of you crossing over to eastern in Washington, DC and back over. Consider calling them for this route:

FAR>CHI Empire Builder

CHI>NOL City of New Orleans

NOL>ATL Cresent

You will remain in the central zone the entire time.

 

[Ispolkom]

They take in account for what zone you started in, and which one you end it. They are both central so it would be a one-zone. I do believe it makes a difference from doing this online compared to over the phone. If Amtrak wants to consider it 2-Zone for the reason of you crossing over to eastern in Washington, DC and back over. Consider calling them for this route:
FAR>CHI Empire Builder

CHI>NOL City of New Orleans

NOL>ATL Crescent

You will remain in the central zone the entire time.

Logic doesn't always get you very far with AGR. I've encountered many agents who wouldn't book the itinerary you give because they can't pull it up in Arrow, and it requires an overnight in New Orleans.

I've booked one-zone awards ATL-WAS-CHI-MOT and MOT-CHI-WAS-SDL, but that was before 4/1/10, when the "rules" supposedly changed. (Actually, I think I booked the Minot-Slidell trip on 4/1/10.)

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I hate having to call back over and over and over again just to get what the region map says should be a piece of cake.

Why even have a map in the first place if it doesn't mean anything to the agents who do the actual booking?

 

[KrazyKoala]

Because the person they hired to draw up that map feels good about themselves.

That's why.

 

[Ispolkom]

Why even have a map in the first place if it doesn't mean anything to the agents who do the actual booking?

Two answers come to mind:

1) AGR doesn't really care about long-distance sleeper redemptions, and it certainly doesn't care about circuitous ones like FAR-CHI-WAS-ATL, until too many people book that and actually travel FAR-CHI-WAS. I've seen that claim. Also, it seems reasonable that many agents rarely book long-distance sleeper redemptions, and don't actually remember the rules, or have a good understanding of the geography.

2) KrazyKoala is right. AGR's long-distance redemption rules were drafted by someone with a severe artistic vision, which required the rules to be kept secret and change frequently, and also to be inconsistently applied. The zone map without border cities adds to the indeterminacy.

I go with #2.

 

[amamba]

AGR Insider said on flyertalk this week that they are going to repost a map with zone cities!

 

[Ryan]

NICE!!!

 

[KrazyKoala]

It could be nice, and it could also be more confusing or a pain. I guess we'll have to wait and find out.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

AGR Insider said on flyertalk this week that they are going to repost a map with zone cities!

Yes, at some point in the future. No date or range was given. I understand it's a small team, but seriously, how hard it is for them to give us what we already had before they decided to take it away? On the one hand it's very refreshing to see complaints answered and sometimes addressed. On the other hand it's rather perplexing to see what still needs to be actively complained about before anyone thinks to resolve it. Nobody who was involved with the current no-names map could have possibly seen it as any sort of improvement over the original map. It's nothing but a bunch floating squares that require access to the previous map to actually decipher. Did the AGR team really need that pointed out to them? If they were already aware their map was so completely hobbled then why has it taken so long to address?

 

[Ispolkom]

AGR Insider said on flyertalk this week that they are going to repost a map with zone cities!

Actually, that claim was made almost a month ago (January 10), and my complaint about the map that started that thread dates to last June. I'm beginning to doubt incompetence and think performance art.

 

[AlanB]

Yes, at some point in the future. No date or range was given. I understand it's a small team, but seriously, how hard it is for them to give us what we already had before they decided to take it away?

It's not very hard at all to put back the old map. But as was noted by Insider, it's part of a larger project to revamp the entire site. When you have limited time, resources, and money it would seem prudent to not go update a page with 1 thing when you're going to redo the entire page in the near future.

And as noted by Insider, they've been rather busy rolling out a new tier and other things that have occupied their time. I don't believe that things have changed much, but as of a few years ago someone who no longer works for Amtrak told me that the entire AGR headquarters office consisted of just 5 people. And while I'm sure that they're not doing the actual work, they do have to coordinate and approve all of the work.

 

[KrazyKoala]

You could be surprised how much five people can accomplish in a corporation. It's not their running the nations government or anything.

 

[Anderson]

Why even have a map in the first place if it doesn't mean anything to the agents who do the actual booking?

Two answers come to mind:

1) AGR doesn't really care about long-distance sleeper redemptions, and it certainly doesn't care about circuitous ones like FAR-CHI-WAS-ATL, until too many people book that and actually travel FAR-CHI-WAS. I've seen that claim. Also, it seems reasonable that many agents rarely book long-distance sleeper redemptions, and don't actually remember the rules, or have a good understanding of the geography.

2) KrazyKoala is right. AGR's long-distance redemption rules were drafted by someone with a severe artistic vision, which required the rules to be kept secret and change frequently, and also to be inconsistently applied. The zone map without border cities adds to the indeterminacy.

I go with #2.

I know there was a change of rules at some point so that if you "turned around" by a significant amount, you'd get billed when you re-entered a zone for the extra zone. This was mainly to combat some of the more insane loopholes out there (something I have no problem with...it's easy to find routings that would have gone for 15,000 points but which would have cost over $1500 on the right/wrong day (KCY-CBS is a good example of this, and ELP-CHI is also a good example on the right days).

With that said, IIRC most AGR redemptions are coach (since a lot of members are going to take years to get to an LD sleeper redemption), and a decent share of the remainder are likely Acela (since a non-trivial share of AGR's big point earners are NEC commuters).

 

[KrazyKoala]

Even people who earn select plus every year, 11,250 points is still low enough to where one would have to wait another year (or buy points) to make the minimum 1-zone roomette of 15,000.

 

[Ryan]

Or use the Amtrak credit card.

I've got about a 70,000 point balance hanging around, and I've never been Select anything.

I've also got about 60,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points that convert to Amtrak (or United) 1:1, so I've got about 10 one zone roomette trips just hanging around for a rainy day.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

When you have limited time, resources, and money it would seem prudent to not go update a page with 1 thing when you're going to redo the entire page in the near future.

That depends on what is being changed, how complicated it is, how long it would take, and how much of a benefit it would be to the users. If AGR's update process makes changing a minor thing like a single map image a huge resource consuming event then something is wrong with the system itself.

And as noted by Insider, they've been rather busy rolling out a new tier and other things that have occupied their time. I don't believe that things have changed much, but as of a few years ago someone who no longer works for Amtrak told me that the entire AGR headquarters office consisted of just 5 people. And while I'm sure that they're not doing the actual work, they do have to coordinate and approve all of the work.

I guess I shouldn't get my hopes up that they'll figure out why sleepers and connections still can't be booked through the website.

 

[KrazyKoala]

I guess I shouldn't get my hopes up that they'll figure out why sleepers and connections still can't be booked through the website.

I know one or two people that could have that implimented in two days on the Amtrak site. I could probably do it myself, it'd just take well over a month cause it's been a while since I made a website.

 

[crescent2]

I've never used AGR, but accumulated/bought enough points late in 2012 to have over 50,000 now. This thread is very interesting, as I'd have thought sleeper redemptions would be common because paying for them is so expensive.

I also don't understand why changing the zone map back to the old one would be difficult at all. It's a simple map with dots for cities. I can see that setting up the on-line procedure for redeeming AGR points would be more difficult, but it seems that someone would have been able to get that done by now. It seems much more important and useful than adding another reward tier to the program. I would think adding that feature would be a priority.

I'm also mystified as to why agents would not know the rules or how the system works, especially if there are only five people. It can't be impossible to learn. Public school systems aren't the most efficiently run systems by any means, but all of this just seems very strange and unreasonable to me. What's going on there?

 

[AlanB]

I also don't understand why changing the zone map back to the old one would be difficult at all. It's a simple map with dots for cities. I can see that setting up the on-line procedure for redeeming AGR points would be more difficult, but it seems that someone would have been able to get that done by now. It seems much more important and useful than adding another reward tier to the program. I would think adding that feature would be a priority.
I'm also mystified as to why agents would not know the rules or how the system works, especially if there are only five people. It can't be impossible to learn. Public school systems aren't the most efficiently run systems by any means, but all of this just seems very strange and unreasonable to me. What's going on there?

I'm sure that it's not hard at all to put back the old map, and I do know how to make web pages. It's a matter of AGR being able to get time with Amtrak's website development team, who have many other projects for many other departments. The AGR people must prioritize what work they want done. And since they want to change the entire page that the map appears on, it sounds like they want to do the map & the page at the same time.
And people have been clamoring for a new tier for quite some time now. And that is something that is best, and more easily, done at the start of a new year.

As for the five people, I'm sorry if I confused you. There are only 5 people or so at headquarters, there are probably a couple hundred agents that we speak with on the phone. Some pay attention during training & remember; others don't.

The five at headquarters you never speak to under normal circumstances. They're the ones making the rules, so I'm sure that they know them. Getting the agents trained in the rules and getting them to follow them is a different matter.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

People have been clamoring for a new tier for quite some time now.

What people would that be?

I've seen dozens of posts in numerous threads asking for a more useful region map.

I've seen exactly zero posts in zero threads clamoring for a new AGR status tier.

 

[jersey42]

Here is a copy of the old map that has been posted before.