My often confusing and rarely satisfying experiences with AGR.

[yarrow]

The agent booked the first thing that showed on his computer, which is via WAS. Hence the 3 zone award.

But if you request the routing via NOL, and mention that you understand that you have to pay for a hotel yourself in NOL, the agent may book it for you. Technically you could also try for SPK-PDX-LAX-NOL-ATL, but that's much more round about.

alan, my point is that for 40k points (a 2 zone roomette round trip) he booked us spk-chi-was-atl

 

[Ispolkom]

alan, my point is that for 40k points (a 2 zone roomette round trip) he booked us spk-chi-was-atl

I hope that this isn't a complaint! In your case I'd thank the agent politely, hang up, and do the Happy Happy Joy Joy Dance.

This sort of result is why I'm perfectly willing to put up with AGR's oddities. Whenever it happens, it always makes me feel like I've won the lottery. I suppose that it could be legitimately said that I'm abusing the system, but I'm willing to live with that.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I have no idea if anyone is still curious about this topic, but I ended up making a sixth attempt at this and getting a date I could work with. Then my work schedule changed again and I had to call AGR a seventh time. The guy I was working with was pretty quiet and didn't say much, which was actually fine with me. This time I not only made sure that Amtrak.com showed that the route was active for the day I picked, I also made sure that there were at least TWO rooms "available" on every single train. I couldn't figure out how to make sure there were two seats on the bus, so I just crossed my fingers on that part. Eventually my AGR reservations agent came back to confirm my information and I requested upper level rooms. I don't really have a problem with the view from down below, but when the toilets backup I don't want to be anywhere near the bottom floor. Luckily that wasn't a problem. I thought about requesting a modification to the Sacramento connection but I couldn't remember what was considered guaranteed and I didn't want to argue with anyone today. That being said, if I wanted to purchase a nested ticket how far south can I reasonably expect to catch the Northbound Coast Starlight (Train 14) from a Westbound California Zephyr (Train 5) if I'm making my own connection?