Phone Support Hold time

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

My wife picked up the CC with the 30,000 points last fall. We could not get into her AGR account to check points so I called in November and realized the email tied to the AGR was from 20+ years ago which has not been used in about that long of a time.

I thought we had this taken care on in November but for whatever reason the email AGR uses did not change. Being off work today due to the storm along the eastern US I called AGR customer service to work on this again. I was on hold for 67 minutes. It still did not work after talking with an agent and she was frustrated as well but we finally got it figured out that one letter was mistyped on their end in the email address.

But to be on hold for 67 minutes. Do they have 2 people working at any given time during the day? I know it is more than that of course but that is just not practical for most people to have that sort of time on their hands. Why would I ever call this number unless I had no other option, which I did not in this case.

The good thing is that both of our AGR accounts can now be checked online, which I like to do to make sure the CC is moving points over correctly, though I have never had any trouble with that, I still like to check.

 

[PaTrainFan]

My wife picked up the CC with the 30,000 points last fall. We could not get into her AGR account to check points so I called in November and realized the email tied to the AGR was from 20+ years ago which has not been used in about that long of a time.

I thought we had this taken care on in November but for whatever reason the email AGR uses did not change. Being off work today due to the storm along the eastern US I called AGR customer service to work on this again. I was on hold for 67 minutes. It still did not work after talking with an agent and she was frustrated as well but we finally got it figured out that one letter was mistyped on their end in the email address.

But to be on hold for 67 minutes. Do they have 2 people working at any given time during the day? I know it is more than that of course but that is just not practical for most people to have that sort of time on their hands. Why would I ever call this number unless I had no other option, which I did not in this case.

The good thing is that both of our AGR accounts can now be checked online, which I like to do to make sure the CC is moving points over correctly, though I have never had any trouble with that, I still like to check.

Are there not massive weather related travel issues today with many trains cancelled? Suspecting they are inundated with calls. Usually best to try first thing in the morning when the call center opens.

 

[trimetbusfan]

That is a very wait for AGR. The longest I’ve had to wait in recent months is 30 minutes.

Winter storms out east today so there probably were a lot of upset passengers calling over cancelations. Also, I think the call center is out on the east coast so that might have affected their staff they had on duty today.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

I agree that they are probably inundated with calls due to the weather.

 

[Anderson]

I count 43 cancellations and truncations along the NEC last night/this morning. Best guess is that Amtrak has around 8-10k pax affected (it'd be a lot more, but AFAICT most of these are late/early trains without a lot of traffic, so ballparking 200-250/train seems like a decent guess). Some are easy fixes (I expect the first few trains running on a few lines will be swamped), but obviously there are going to be quite a few folks for whom this doesn't work (and probably a few who are in, say, First on the Acela whose replacement trains lack free seats in First) and others that need a clumsy fix. [1] And that's to say nothing of the "irrational cancellations" (like 66 today, which got cancelled because 151 was cancelled despite the weather being set to clear by this morning aside from some wind).

[1] So, e.g. the morning train out of NPN was cancelled; if you're going beyond RVR, switching to the NFK train would normally work...but that one doesn't have a bus connection, so it's either (1) wait to leave around 0900, (2) get a ride to NFK (and I can imagine folks would want Amtrak to reimburse if that's a taxi), or (3) get a ride to RVR. As a note, this group probably includes about 30-50 people (maybe a bit more). If you're going to RVM (and that's probably 3-5 people, which is notably not zero), now you're looking at having to get to NFK and then getting from RVR back downtown. Admittedly, Amtrak could handle this by hiring a taxi or two. And then there are the WBG folks (again, 30-50), who are just sort-of stuffed, since the next train isn't until that afternoon...and to make matters worse, while the morning train has a 62-seat BC car, the afternoon one only has about 18 seats in BC. And of course, this doesn't count folks who were doubtless informed after boarding their trains that they wouldn't quite be getting to their final destinations tonight.

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

Are there not massive weather related travel issues today with many trains cancelled? Suspecting they are inundated with calls. Usually best to try first thing in the morning when the call center opens.

That is certainly true about yesterday but when I called in November I had a hold time of close to the same length and I don’t remember any major service disruption on the day I called in November.

And the suggestion to call early in the morning is great but I am at work at 8 AM most days. I start work at 7:30. That gets back to my point about many are just not going to have time to sit on the phone for 45-60 minutes or more.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

That is certainly true about yesterday but when I called in November I had a hold time of close to the same length and I don’t remember any major service disruption on the day I called in November.

And the suggestion to call early in the morning is great but I am at work at 8 AM most days. I start work at 7:30. That gets back to my point about many are just not going to have time to sit on the phone for 45-60 minutes or more.

Don’t they have a call back option?

 

[joelkfla]

Don’t they have a call back tomorrow option?

I've never gotten a call back tomorrow option, but I've gotten a call back later based on the estimated wait time. The call back has usually come in less than the estimated time, but sometimes I've had to wait on hold a few minutes after accepting the call.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

I've never gotten a call back tomorrow option, but I've gotten a call back later based on the estimated wait time. The call back has usually come in less than the estimated time, but sometimes I've had to wait on hold a few minutes after accepting the call.

Dang auto type. I’ll edit that to what I meant.

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

I've never gotten a call back tomorrow option, but I've gotten a call back later based on the estimated wait time. The call back has usually come in less than the estimated time, but sometimes I've had to wait on hold a few minutes after accepting the call.

I will listen for that option the next time I call, I don't remember hearing that option. One thing I do remember and did not put in the original post is that the phone tree mentioned a 15 min wait or maybe more than 15 minute but that is a far cry from 67 minutes.

Props to the agent that worked with me yesterday as she stayed on the phone until I could verify everything was working.

 

[PaTrainFan]

Don’t they have a call back option?

The couple of times that I relied on the call back option ended with...nada. So I never opt for that now. I (not so) patiently wait on hold.

 

[Trucker72]

I have used the call back option at least 10 times over the last 3 plus years I have always been called back. In fact, once we were sitting in CUS and I could not accept the call. They called me back a second time.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

The couple of times that I relied on the call back option ended with...nada. So I never opt for that now. I (not so) patiently wait on hold.

You might want to double-check the privacy settings on your phone and with your phone service provider. I have it set to ignore anything it thinks might be a sales call or phone spam and this has muted legitimate calls in the past. A call that gets muted by phone settings should show up in the missed calls list. When I miss a call I'm expecting I look through the log and add it to my contacts. After that it comes in like a normal call. If your phone service provider blocked it you'll either need to turn off spam call muting or let the calling party know so they can fix it on their end. This is separate from the National Do Not Call Registry.

 

[daybeers]

FWIW whenever I get a call back, it's always this number: 610-387-2289

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

Well I am back to square one in that AGR is sending a two factor authentication code to my wife's email yet the email never arrives. So I can't get the code to check her account. My AGR account does not bother with this.
I wonder if her address is stored in a few locations and one has it typed correctly and in another location on their system the email is typed differently or they are still trying the use the old email from 20 years ago.
Looks like I will making a phone call yet again. I tried using the online chat on the Amtrak website and the reply was "Call."

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Well I am back to square one in that AGR is sending a two factor authentication code to my wife's email yet the email never arrives. So I can't get the code to check her account. My AGR account does not bother with this.
I wonder if her address is stored in a few locations and one has it typed correctly and in another location on their system the email is typed differently or they are still trying the use the old email from 20 years ago.
Looks like I will making a phone call yet again. I tried using the online chat on the Amtrak website and the reply was "Call."

It may be a problem with her email. I have been using an att.net email since the beginning of time and many years ago I was not getting Amtrak promotions. I was told back then to set up a new email and try that. So I set up a Yahoo email and that worked. I have that email forward all its mail to my att.net account.

 

[jis]

It may be a problem with her email. I have been using an att.net email since the beginning of time and many years ago I was not getting Amtrak promotions. I was told back then to set up a new email and try that. So I set up a Yahoo email and that worked. I have that email forward all its mail to my att.net account.

The funny thing is Att Mail is hosted by Yahoo Mail.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

The funny thing is att.mail is hosted by yahoo.mail

I know. But it wasn't waaaaaay back when. I could try changing my Amtrak email back to att.net and see if it works now, just haven't bothered...don't want to miss anything.

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

It may be a problem with her email. I have been using an att.net email since the beginning of time and many years ago I was not getting Amtrak promotions. I was told back then to set up a new email and try that. So I set up a Yahoo email and that worked. I have that email forward all its mail to my att.net account.

She is using a Gmail account now, and we can't remember the password for her bellsouth.net email. Back then I set up emails for everyone in the family including my kids but my wife never used that email as we lost the password and ATT does not have any real way to reset a password without a bunch of other info we also don't know at this point like her security questions. I assume my children's emails from bellsouth.net are in the same situation. ATT admits there is practically no customer service on the free email accounts. At one time Verizon owned Yahoo! so ATT was paying their main competitor in the wireless phone business to run their email.
After I posted I did try again and the email went through immediately, and I found the emails from the 11th also. There was like six of them were I tried to get the code. The emails were clearly not there as I searched in a variety of mannerm but the time stamp was near-ish the time they would have been sent but maybe not the exact time. I do think they were a bit delayed. It may have been a Google problem, but at least I know it worked. While I was on the phone with the agent a few days ago she stayed on the line until it was working but she sent a verification code over the phone as a text message.

As I was typing this I decided to try again and no email verification was needed. I guess that was a one-off. At this point my wrath shall be directed at Google and their Gmail for the problems. Mainly because I hate to be upset with Amtrak as I do try to support them and only want whats best for Amtrak and want to fix problems that would keep others away but I would be determined to work through.