Split Tickets and Bustitution Points

saxman · Jun 9, 2009

Last month I took a trip from Chicago to Boston on the Lake Shore Limited. As many might be aware, May was the month they were doing a bustitution from Albany to Boston. So I got two tickets for the trip, one for the train, #448, CHI to ALB, and one for the bus, #3448, ALB to BOS.

My full fare for the whole trip was printed on both tickets, so I was curious to see how they divid up the points. The fare was $83, so $83 was printed on each.

I just got my points and they divided the fare as such on the AGR site: $63.91 for CHI to ALB and $19.09 for the ALB to BOS. So they gave me 128 points for the first part, but 0 (zero) points for the bus! huh? Since I paid $83 I thought I would at least give me $83 x 2 which equals 166, and said the the bus ticket was worth zero dollars. But since they put $19.09 for my bus ticket I would think I should get 100 points for it. Or if anything, at the least a total of 166 points, which is what I paid.

AlanB · Jun 9, 2009

Agreed, something is wrong. You are entitled to $83 X 2 in points, as it's not your fault that you were placed on a bus.

I suspect that problem here is that you've run into that rule that says you can't get points for the same train twice, even though they actually gave the bus a number. But I'm betting that somehow the system isn't seeing the 3 in front of the 448.

This no doubt is something that you'll have to call AGR to fix. Perhaps even more than once.

ALC Rail Writer · Jun 10, 2009

That being said, with split tickets-- what if you do have a ticket in coach for a train you're ticketed to go on a sleeper on later down the line? For isntence taking a coach seat and getting a room down the line for a single night. With two seperate tickets, which gets credit? The more valuable one? Or the one that just gets scanned into the system first?

Long Train Runnin' · Jun 10, 2009

You only get points for differnt trains.... So you will get the credit for the first part only I think...

printman2000 · Jun 10, 2009

ALC_Rail_Writer said:
That being said, with split tickets-- what if you do have a ticket in coach for a train you're ticketed to go on a sleeper on later down the line? For isntence taking a coach seat and getting a room down the line for a single night. With two seperate tickets, which gets credit? The more valuable one? Or the one that just gets scanned into the system first?

So make sure you DO NOT put in your AGR number for the coach tickets and DO put it in for the sleeper tickets.