Wow! Is this the new company or were things always this bad???
Seems to be the new company. It's possible that very early on the old company was this bad too, but back then there were far less people in the program and far less redemptions, since it was brand new and there was no credit card or minimum points.
The real questions in my mind are: Is it because they're new? Is it a lack of training? Is it the quality of people that they're hiring at the pay level they're paying? Or some combination of the above?
When I just made a reservation, I was actually worried that they would hassle me about the enforced layover between the Crescent and the Sunset in NOL. My rep didn't bat an eyelash at that, repeated everything back to me, and he got it right. For another leg of our trip, my Mom used her points. She too encountered no problems and again the rep got everything right. So there are some agents that do seem to know what they are doing.
I don't know if they're hold overs from the old company, or if they just paid attention in training.
Yet reports like Jim55's are still way to frequent. I've seen far too many reports of people getting the wrong dates for their trip, reports of people being routed the wrong way or told that they can't go that way when I know that it is a valid routing, and now Jim's interesting problem.
We can only hope that the new company cleans up it's act and very soon, as Amtrak is going to pay the price big time as people show up at stations only to find out that they're not booked on that train on that date.