Wonder where they get such numbers?

[me_little_me]

Train: Crescent

Cities: GRV to NYP (Geenville, SC to Penn Station)

Date: October 10

Cost: Roomette for 2 adults: $586 OR 40,434 points (are they kidding?)

Bedroom for 2 adults: $609 OR 21,011 points

Where do they come up with this stuff?

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Grab it (the bedroom) !!! Then ask questions.

 

[me_little_me]

Grab it (the bedroom) !!! Then ask questions.

The bedroom is not a bargain. It is just the regular $.0289 per point. It is the roomette that is crazy.

 

[chakk]

Looks to me like the roomette points cost quote is EXACTLY DOUBLE what it should be. A programming glitch? Or did the system see two roomettes requested via points instead of two persons in one roomette?

 

[SP&S]

Out of curiosity, I just looked for myself. The OP's numbers are correct for one roomette or one bedroom. The roomette points amount is crazy.

 

[PaulM]

Two bugs for the price of one :wacko:

I added a bike to a Illinois Zephyr to Capitol Limited reservation. The price for the bike was $20; but the additional point total was 1600. Now I know there was a bug in the price: it should have been $30 (10 for the IZ and 20 for the CL). Even at $30, that is only $0.01875 per point.

The fare was correct at approximately $0.029 per point.

 

[the_traveler]

The award cost is 800 points PER TRAIN! If you can get there on 1 train (example: SDY to Hudson, NY on an Empire Service train), it would cost 800 points. However, if you take the LSL connecting in ALB to an Empire Service train, it would cost 1,600 points!

 

[PaulM]

The award cost is 800 points PER TRAIN! If you can get there on 1 train (example: SDY to Hudson, NY on an Empire Service train), it would cost 800 points. However, if you take the LSL connecting in ALB to an Empire Service train, it would cost 1,600 points!

I don't know if you were addressing my 1600 points for a bicycle complaint, but I see what you are saying. And Amtrak.com seems to agree with you. In my case the bike was $10 (800 points) on first train and $20 (still 800) for the second for a total of 1600.

But every thing I've seen says

Minimum award pricing: Regardless of the cash fare, a non-Acela award ticket costs a minimum of 800 AGR points. As a result, using AGR points for such tickets with a cash price under $24 (e.g., LNC-PHL or BWI-WAS) results in lower yields.

The key words are "award ticket". Nothing about minimum per segment. The "ticket" for two segments, one with sleeper, and both with bikes was way over the $24 threshold.

But even stranger is the separating the fare from the bicycle charge. When you add business class or a room to a reservation, the rail fare and sleeper supplement aren't segregated and subject to the 800 minimum.

In my case, I had to change the return date and called AGR. The agent again wanted to charge me 1600 points; but admitted that it looked like a bug and would file whatever up the chain of command. We solved it by my paying the fare with points at 2.9 cents per point and for the bike with cash.

I called it a bug; but it could be a design flaw. Perhaps AGR's communication to the programmer wasn't any clearer than its typical communication to customers.