When is an available room not available

[PaulM]

I wanted to book a roomette PDX to CHI on a JULY 15. Amtrak.com showed one available; But the agent was adamant that it was not available the whole way, like it might only be available from PDX to Vancouver, WA. So I settled for a second choice date. After rechecking Amtrak.com, I called back and asked the agent to check again. She said that it shows one available, but that when she went to book it, it wasn't available.

It's an hour later and I checked Amtrak.com again and, seeing it still available, I tried a dummy booking. The "Hurry, only one left" message appeared.

Does this make sense; or is AGR playing games when rooms are almost sold out?

 

[amamba]

Sometimes this happens when there isn't one room available the route - its like one room is available PDX to WPT and then a different room is available WPT to CHI. If you get a good agent they can check and work it out.

 

[the_traveler]

That happened to me.

There were no rooms available from CHI to NYP, but the agent did some checking and found a room from CHI to SDY and another from SDY to NYP!

 

[DET63]

That happened to me.
There were no rooms available from CHI to NYP, but the agent did some checking and found a room from CHI to SDY and another from SDY to NYP!

Was either room a penthouse suite?

 

[the_traveler]

No, but they were on different "trains"! The CHI-SDY segment was on #448 and the SDY-NYP segment was on #48. So I had to move from the front of the train to the rear of the LSL. And because it was unoccupied, I was allowed to make the switch at SYR and the long platform there!

 

[saxman]

But with the OP, it looks like there IS a single roomette available all the way from PDX to CHI. So why does the agent say there isn't one open for a AGR booking.

 

[the_traveler]

Although unlikely, could it be that when the OP asked AGR there were none at that time, but then someone cancelled and one became available, and by the time the OP called back it was taken? Remember we say it's rare, but when changing a reservation from paid to AGR that someone could grab the room IN THE FEW SECONDS between when the agent cancels the paid reservation and grabs that same room for the AGR award? :blush:

 

[AlanB]

But with the OP, it looks like there IS a single roomette available all the way from PDX to CHI. So why does the agent say there isn't one open for a AGR booking.

It does look that way, and therein lies the problem. ARROW sees that one or more rooms are open for the entire journey when combined together and thinks that it is the same room the whole way. But it is not. And when an agent actually tries to pull that room from inventory, they get an error message.

I had this happen to me a few years back on the EB, I went to book the last available room being shown on Amtrak.com via points and the agent was unable to book it for me. Thanks to the help of a friend, we figured out that there was an empty room from Chicago to Sandpoint and another empty room from Havre to Portland. Armed with that knowledge, I called AGR back and asked the agent to grab the first room from CHI to Whitefish (wanted to change at an earlier hour) and then grab the other room from Whitefish to Portland.

That worked perfectly and we moved from room #14 to #10 in Whitefish.

The key is that one must figure out where the overlap is, and sometimes it's not just a combination of 2 rooms. I've seen this happen where one would have needed to switch twice in order to go end to end on a run. Or if you get a nice enough agent, they may take the time to help you figure out where the overlap is.

 

[the_traveler]

That's what happened in my example above. There were no rooms on #48 from CHI to NYP, but there were rooms on #448 to BOS. The AGR agent took the time to discover this, and then looked for an available room from a midpoint to NYP on #48!

 

[battalion51]

This is the kind of chaos that can happen with rooms, just imagine if they tried assigning seats... h34r:

 

[Guest]

Amtrak's liberal cancellation/change policy, combined with allowing passengers to select a specific room in advance enhances this problem.

 

[Anthony]

Amtrak's liberal cancellation/change policy, combined with allowing passengers to select a specific room in advance enhances this problem.

Probably 1% or fewer of reservations involve a room number request.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I'm a last minute sleeper ticket purchaser and I've found this to be a common problem as the train begins to run out of rooms. What is uncommon is for anyone at reservations to do anything about it unless you call and prod and plead with them again and again. Otherwise they'll only spend a minute or two plugging in your request before giving up and suggesting another date or route. It's not just AGR either; I've run into this with revenue tickets as well. The reluctance to find the crossover points gets mighty old mighty quick.

 

[PaulM]

So, it looks like I should have said good by and quickly tried to figure out the combination that would work and then called back.

Thanks for all the replies.