Another bug on Amtak site?

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Jul 16, 2010
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I tried to make reservations for two people in two roomettes where it said "Only one room available at this price" and even though, in one instance, the room was cheaper than any other day, it would not allow me to add a second room. I can't see that if there were only one roomette left, that Amtrak would be offering it at that price. I think that what is happening is that it can no longer handle multiple room requests unless they are all at the same bucket.
 
There is only one roomette per car at low bucket. I always book very early, in order to get the low bucket price (I'm on the Portland section of the EB, so there is only one sleeper car). I have had agents attempt at my request to change my roomette to something other than the default #2. Then they would insist that if I wanted #5, 6, 7 or 8, I would have to pay more, as those were a higher price. A skilled agent said "that's not right" and figured out that (s)he had to cancel the first reservation, then put the requested location into the original input, in order for me to get the low bucket price I was entitled to for being the earliest.

Which brings up the question, if you request two roomettes on a train with two sleeper cars, the default is one in each sleeper car at low bucket. If so, why can't you get two adjacent ones at the low bucket price, and then the next roomette on the train goes at the next bucket?

If I were you, I'd call and talk to an agent.
 
After tip from a friend found that Amtrak website says Crescent #20 ATL - WAS / NYP "we don't have service matching your request" on JULY 4 and 6th only. ATL - CLT does show train. CLT - WAS on 5th and 7th shows sold out. as of 1800 on 4th.

Another screw up from Amtrak IT..
 
Which brings up the question, if you request two roomettes on a train with two sleeper cars, the default is one in each sleeper car at low bucket. If so, why can't you get two adjacent ones at the low bucket price, and then the next roomette on the train goes at the next bucket?

Prices are not tied to specific rooms. They are tied to inventory levels. The issue is that Arrow is programmed to sell rooms in a certain order, and often agents don’t know the process of requesting a specific room as part of the actual reservation command. This results in all sorts of confusion/misinformation about how room pricing works.
 
You misunderstand. It would simply not sell me any additional room at any price. I ended up calling this morning and got my tickets.

Did you wind up with two separate reservations/PNRs, one for each price, or did you get both of them at different prices on the same reservation?

My general understanding (and this isn’t an Arrow-specific thing, airline reservation systems have similar restrictions) is that everyone on the same PNR has to be in the same class (including fare bucket).
 
Prices are not tied to specific rooms. They are tied to inventory levels. The issue is that Arrow is programmed to sell rooms in a certain order, and often agents don’t know the process of requesting a specific room as part of the actual reservation command. This results in all sorts of confusion/misinformation about how room pricing works.
The agents need to be trained to the max on the command line interface and all the twiddles possible with it. I know that the airline agents swear by it to work around things that the GUI won't allow.
 
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Did you wind up with two separate reservations/PNRs, one for each price, or did you get both of them at different prices on the same reservation?

My general understanding (and this isn’t an Arrow-specific thing, airline reservation systems have similar restrictions) is that everyone on the same PNR has to be in the same class (including fare bucket).

I'll never know. One of the other trains on my trip was sold out so I moved my trip to two days later. Two roomettes.

As an aside, the segment from Chicago to Grand Junction was sold out of bedrooms so we took two (expensive) roomettes accross from each other as an alternative and used points for that segment. When the email notification came, I noticed that the rooms were 3 and 4 but in two different cars so I called back and they fixed that. Then I went back online and found that the Family BR was a LOT cheaper than the 2 roomettes so we talked about the pluses and minuses and decided to try it out. I called back, changed to the Family room and saved over 7000 points. Both return trains are in bedrooms.
 
I'll never know. One of the other trains on my trip was sold out so I moved my trip to two days later. Two roomettes.
<SNIP>
Then I went back online and found that the Family BR was a LOT cheaper than the 2 roomettes so we talked about the pluses and minuses and decided to try it out. I called back, changed to the Family room and saved over 7000 points. Both return trains are in bedrooms.
You may be pleasantly surprised. We (two adults, one 12 year old) book the Family Bedroom when possible. Views out both windows, plenty of space (We leave the upper bunk down) to spread out, snooze, set up our Survival System...
Being able to see out of both sides of the car is a huge plus. No traffic going by in the aisle, and even though the heads are down the hall about 20 feet, they are larger and usually pretty clean.
Four people would not be crowded.
 
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