Question regarding Guest Rewards Program

[Ashland Train Enthusiast]

Hi All!

I have a quick question about the Guest Rewards program that I was hoping y'all could help me out with. I've ridden Amtrak irregularly as a kid (mostly for day trips up and down the east coast), and am now looking to start using it more for travel, and am thinking about enrolling in the Rewards program. I am a soon to be married man, and wondering which would be better, for me and my fiancee to enroll separately, or together, or just one of us enroll? Also, I was wondering if there are any "family" type programs available so that if my parents wanted to take the train to visit me, we could all start accumulating points under the same account. My apologies if this is already answered, but I didn't find a response to this question in my browsing of the Guest Rewards forum.

Thanks for all your advice! I found this site a couple of weeks ago, and it's been a wealth of information for me, and I hope one of these days I can ride enough of the rails to contribute in my own right.

~ DCTE

 

[frugalist]

First, welcome to Amtrak Unlimited.

An AGR account is an individual account. You would have your account, your new wife would have her own account with an account number different from yours, and each of your family members would have their own separate accounts. In the AGR program, there is no such thing as a family account. Nor can you pool your points with another family member.

However, AGR just recently started allowing you to transfer some of your points to another AGR member. This could be useful if you and your wife want to take a trip, but don't have enough points in your individual account to do it as a reward. For example, say you have 4,000 points in your account and your wife has 2,000 points in her account and you want to take a trip from Washington, DC to Boston. A reward in coach would cost 3,000 points per passenger. You have enough for one ticket, but not for both. However, if you transfered 1,000 points from your account to your wife's, you would both now have enough points to book the trip as a reward. The downside to this program is that Amtrak charges a penny a point to transfer points. So this transfer would cost you $10. But you'd probably consider it worth it since $10 is a lot less than the cost of a ticket.

I definitely think you should both enroll in the program so you can both accumulate points. AGR has a referral program, where if someone refers you and you take a paid Amtrak trip within 90 days of signing up, you get some bonus enrollment points in your account. If you'd like a referral, feel free to send me a PM (private message). Then after you get your AGR account number, you can refer your fiance and other family members.

I hope this helps. There are plenty of opportunities to accumulate AGR points that don't require train travel. I'm taking my first reward trip in a couple of weeks, courtesy of AGR -- from Florida to DC on the Silver Meteor. Somehow, it seems even more fun when it's free.

 

[spot1181]

Also you can buy up to 10,000 points in a calendar year, plus many ways to earn a lot of points with AGR Mastercard through Chase, bonuses just for signing up. One point for ever dollar spent,two points for Amtrak purchases.

 

[Ashland Train Enthusiast]

Thank you both for your prompt reply. Individual accounts being the case, would it make more sense for each of us to purchase a ticket independently, or for me to purchase both tickets using my AGR account, or would there be no real difference?

Frugalist, I may take you up on that offer for a referral in the next couple of weeks as I start to figure out my fall schedule. What brings you to DC, if I may ask?

~ DCTE

 

[frugalist]

Thank you both for your prompt reply. Individual accounts being the case, would it make more sense for each of us to purchase a ticket independently, or for me to purchase both tickets using my AGR account, or would there be no real difference?

Frugalist, I may take you up on that offer for a referral in the next couple of weeks as I start to figure out my fall schedule. What brings you to DC, if I may ask?

~ DCTE

You can make one reservation for the two of you. As with airline loyalty programs, it's who rides that gets the points, not who pays. It doesn't matter who pays. I believe you'll get two tickets - one for each of you. Now, with sleeper accommodations, it gets just a tad bit tricky. As I understand it, you both get AGR points for your rail fares, but only the first person listed on the reservation gets AGR points for the room accommodation portion of the fare. I'm sure someone on here will correct me if I didn't get that quite right.

The trip to DC is a bit of vacation. My son, who lives in Atlanta, is coming up on the Crescent (courtesy of Dad's AGR points) and we're meeting up in Baltimore for a day. Then we're taking either MARC or a Northeast Regional down to DC for a few days. We've been to DC on a very short trip the week before Clinton's inauguration (took the NE Regional from New York), so I'm looking forward to returning. Never been to Baltimore, other than driving through, so I'm looking forward to seeing a new city, even if just for a few hours.

 

[the_traveler]

Welcome!

I agree with frugalist's recommendation to accept his referral offer. (He beat me to it!

) However, I would just ask for a referral for yourself, at this time!

The reason I say this is that the person referred gets a 1,500 sign-up bonus, and the person making the referral receives another 500 bonus points. After you get your AGR number, you could refer the others and earn bonus points for your account!

(I'm not trying to take points away from him - I'm trying to get more for you!)

 

[PaulM]

However, AGR just recently started allowing you to transfer some of your points to another AGR member. This could be useful if you and your wife want to take a trip, but don't have enough points in your individual account to do it as a reward. For example, say you have 4,000 points in your account and your wife has 2,000 points in her account and you want to take a trip from Washington, DC to Boston. A reward in coach would cost 3,000 points per passenger. You have enough for one ticket, but not for both. However, if you transfered 1,000 points from your account to your wife's, you would both now have enough points to book the trip as a reward.

This is especially useful for sleeper awards. Because your wife goes along on a sleeper award for 0 points, you can transfer all of hers to come up with enough.

Because my wife usually travels with me on sleeper trips (not necessarily on shorter bike/point runs), the relatively few points she accumulates from the rail portion of our trips have never been used. But now they can be transferred to me.

 

[frugalist]

Welcome!

I agree with frugalist's recommendation to accept his referral offer. (He beat me to it!

) However, I would just ask for a referral for yourself, at this time!

The reason I say this is that the person referred gets a 1,500 sign-up bonus, and the person making the referral receives another 500 bonus points. After you get your AGR number, you could refer the others and earn bonus points for your account!

(I'm not trying to take points away from him - I'm trying to get more for you!)

That's exactly what I suggested he do.

 

[RRrich]

Because my wife usually travels with me on sleeper trips (not necessarily on shorter bike/point runs), the relatively few points she accumulates from the rail portion of our trips have never been used. But now they can be transferred to me.

I think that a penny a point transfer fee is too high so I am letting points accumulate in wifey's account until she has enough for a redemption - perhaps in my name, perhaps in hers.

 

[Ashland Train Enthusiast]

Thanks for the help guys. I had no idea about the referral bonus, so I will definitely take advantage of it.

As for traveling with an AGR ticket then, it doesn't matter whose name is on the ticket, so for instance if I had the points, but my fiancee needed to travel, I could book her a ticket with my points, amd I understanding that correctly?

Thanks!

 

[frugalist]

Thanks for the help guys. I had no idea about the referral bonus, so I will definitely take advantage of it.

As for traveling with an AGR ticket then, it doesn't matter whose name is on the ticket, so for instance if I had the points, but my fiancee needed to travel, I could book her a ticket with my points, amd I understanding that correctly?

Thanks!

That's correct. You can use your points to book travel in anyone's name. You don't even have to travel with him/her. For example, I used my AGR points to book my son's trip later this month from Atlanta to Baltimore, then from DC back to Atlanta. The reservations are in his name, and he can pick up his tickets in Atlanta even though I'm in Florida. I've also used my points to book my trip from Florida. Even though we'll be meeting up in Baltimore, we're getting there separately. Not an issue with AGR.

 

[Guest]

Could someone PM me a referral code - I'm just about to sign up for the AGR program. Thanks!

 

[chloe27]

Could someone PM me a referral code - I'm just about to sign up for the AGR program. Thanks!

Whoops- that was written by me. Please PM me the referral code. I didn't realize I was not signed in at time of posting. Thank you!

 

[Ryan]

There aren't codes to speak of. If you want a referral, PM me your email address - I put it into AGRs website and they send you a email with a link to sign up.