Amtrak blows

[the_traveler]

{Member speaking}

I agree with many of the suggestions made. I for one would never make a non-refundable hotel reservation. That is why I do not use sites like Priceline or Hotwire. Too many things can change. And the idea of taling the TE is a great idea. Why should the kids suffer due to the parent's rage? :huh:

{Moderator speaking}

Since this is clearly a case of a guest's rant, and the guest has not yet to respond to the suggestions provided, this thread may be closed in a few days if the guest does not respond and closure is deemed necessary.

 

[Rob Creighton]

I know a lot of people seem frustrated with how this person reacted to having to take part of her trip on a bus, instead of the train... yet I suspect, it's closer to how the average person is going to respond to something that ruins their plans. Let's be honest, as foamers we put up with a lot of bad customer service, surly employees and many times look at a late train as "bonus" train time. The average person, who thinks taking the train might be relaxing, yet doesn't have the passion a lot of us do for train travel-- they don't want to put up with lousy customer service, or even the inconvenience of a bus sub, especially one that winds up being planned in advance of their travel. (I suspect people wouldn't like, but can understand a bustitution f there's a wreck or something that happens while on their trip.)

I also understand why this traveler doesn't want to be on a bus for a big part of their trip. As a kid, my Mom and I rode Greyhound one way from Chicago to New York. I was about 11 and all gung ho. Well neither of us were so gung ho with a driver putting the pedal to the metal during a driving rain storm at 2 in the morning on the Penn. Turnpike. It was a rather frightening experience. Also, as an adult, I've riden the 'Hound a few times and have been quite impressed at how they can turn a 90 minute bus ride into a 3 hour experience, and a 3 hour bus ride into a 6 hour experience. My one Amtrak bustitution between Cleveland and Buffalo New York was also a joy. It took 4 hours to get everyone off the LSL and onto buses... then the travel time...and probably another 4 hours waiting for all the buses to get to Buffalo so we could move on to NYC. That was fun to experience with a nice little buzz that turned into a hangover.... And oh yeah, Amtrak knew about that before leaving Chicago. If I had known, I could have and would have delayed my trip for a day or two. In fact, it would have worked out better for me because a friend could have gone with me.

Because of my experience on buses and my Amtrak bustitution...I understand why that's a horrible solution for someone with kids.

 

[A.J.]

Because of my experience on buses and my Amtrak bustitution...I understand why that's a horrible solution for someone with kids.

I swore off Greyhound several years ago after a few very poor experiences. I think a lot of us would indeed be disappointed to be bustituted and I know many here have had that very experience. However, I think what is so frustrating, for me at least, is the manner in which the OP reacted. Yeah, I'm sure it is super frustrating, but she doesn't seem inclined to take a reasonable look at the situation, try to make the best of things or look at it with any measure of practicality. One hopes that after blowing off steam (publicly) she can take a level-headed look at the situation and make the best of things. there is still a great family weekend to be had, just not entirely what she had planned.

 

[cirdan]

They train their staff to focus on making things right for the customer- "Service Excellence" "Through the eyes of the customer". Their Service Excellence training programs are studied by business students at Harvard, Duke and Yale.. Do you know that every Ritz employee is given the authority every single day to expense up to $2000 per guest, per day to ensure they are happy with their level of service? Do you know how much money they actually use of that allowance? ….2%- that's it. Do you know why? Because they make it right from the very beginning.

I agree with the other posters that it can be very disappointing to have a train trip re-booked onto a bus, and that Amtrak apparently wasn't aware of the work or failed to mention it at the time of the booking. There's definitely room for improvement there.

However, the comparison to the Ritz doesn't stand up. Most of the staff there don't actually care but have scripted dialogs imprinted in their brains. If you say something they weren't expecting you can throw them entirely as they totter over the edge of their mental flow-charts. I've seen this happen many times. It is one thing I do like about Amtrak that they don't do that level of brainwashing. The staff are genuine, both genuinely friendly and (sadly on occasions) genuinely unfriendly, but no fake scripted dialogs. And I like it that way.

 

[jphjaxfl]

It is sad, however that the only alternative to a train trip is a bus trip. Its not Amtrak 's fault ....its the system. When I was 7 and 12 back in 50s and 60s, we only traveled by train because my Dad worked for a railroad and we liked to travel by train. We didn't do buses. But at that time, trains were never bustituted. Track work was done while the trains ran. Sometimes trains were re-routed due to weather. I rode a Rock Island train on the C&NW. Amtrak 's knows I don't do bustitution of more than 2single hours. They just refund my fare and I fly or drive. Its sad we don't have a better system, but we let it happen.

 

[ScottC4746]

Written from a p****d consumer to Amtrak...

To whom it may concern.

For the first time EVER, I booked train travel for my family from STL to Chicago and back, the weekend of Father's day. I was notified (via automated voice message) that my return trip was changed- without my approval- to reflect a bus trip home instead of my pre purchased train ride. The bus ride is much longer and if I wanted to ride a bus I would have booked a BUS trip. We booked and pre paid for this “train” trip, to give our 7 and 12 year old boys the experience of train travel. Instead of upgrading us we were downgraded. After several calls and several "customer service representatives" I was told Amtrak does not compensate folks for their scheduling issues.. “they are doing yearly rail work”.. Hmm.. maybe you could have told me that before I took off work, spent $1000 on hotel and paid for a train that WAS NOT GOING TO RUN THAT DAY!... What were my options you ask?......I could cancel my reservation ( of course I still have over $1000 pre purchased, non refundable hotel accommodations), take the bus or pay an additional $144 per room ( I would need 2) plus an “accommodation/rail fee” The “accommodation” fee was the exact amount of my initial purchase

( My entire pre paid purchase before rail work was scheduled $129.60- My purchase amount today to have the same train riding experience- $417.60).. and nothing from Amtrak to show their apologies , not even verbally apology… just a “well, there’s YEARLY rail work that day”.....

I travel Southwest airlines three times per week… and yes I have more than enough miles to travel for free. I could have flown for free but wanted so badly to give my boys a wonderful experience. Our boys will never know the hell you have put me through to ensure they have a wonderful TRAIN riding experience… I will never use your “services” again. Keep your free stuff… because I have already paid out of pocket. It’s like taking my wallet and spending MY money however you see fit. **** poor establishment and **** poor customer service. It actually makes me happy to say that I work for a very large company and many of my executive peers use Amtrak weekly- they now know about my first and last experience and they will be flying from now on. Check out Southwest airlines, DaVita dialysis and Disney.. The Hilton and the Ritz.. Do you know what they all have in common?? They train their staff to focus on making things right for the customer- “Service Excellence” “Through the eyes of the customer”. Their Service Excellence training programs are studied by business students at Harvard, Duke and Yale.. Do you know that every Ritz employee is given the authority every single day to expense up to $2000 per guest, per day to ensure they are happy with their level of service? Do you know how much money they actually use of that allowance? ….2%- that’s it. Do you know why? Because they make it right from the very beginning. Why are Southwest fares the lowest in the industry- why don’t they charge fees to check baggage? Because they have happy customers and provide service excellence therefore they have a stable business. They make it right! Have fun moving Coal- that’s where your kind of “customer service” gets companies these days- out of business.[/font]

I know I probably should just derail this conversation and let it die on the siding but I have to chime in...Amtrak did not decide to do track work, the owner of the track did, which is not Amtrak. YOU are not the only one affected by the trackwork, look at how many passangers a train carries. Amtrak did not decide to do track work to ruin your trip, nor did the host railroad. Try flying into/out of Chicago in the dead of winter. It is not the airlines fault that flights are canceled.

 

[SarahZ]

Not worth it...

 

[jis]

Not worth it...

+1

 

[ArchBishop]

By my count there are 5 trains a day running Chicago to St. Louis. Are we to believe they cancelled all 5?

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Simply said, Amtrak does NOT "blow"!

 

[AlanB]

By my count there are 5 trains a day running Chicago to St. Louis. Are we to believe they cancelled all 5?

Four are cancelled over part of their run, where buses are being used to connect between the where the train stops and those cities. The other one, the Texas Eagle, is rerouted via another route and becomes the only through train.

This has happened over the last 2 summers as Illinois, the Fed, and Union Pacific work to bring high speed running at 110 MPH between St. Louis and Chicago.

And it is Union Pacific that decides when they want to do the work based upon their other needs around their system for the crews that do this type of work. During the periods where they work, its simply not possible to run trains as they would be seriously delayed by the work and it would make the work far more expensive if UP had to work in such a fashion as to allow Amtrak to get by 10 times a day.

 

[Peter KG6LSE]

This is one of the cases where I will weigh in against Amtrak maximizing revenue, but I'd like to see the policy as "If we have to cancel your train and bustitute, we will offer you that option or the option of transferring to a different (still operating) train if one is available at no markup or we will offer you a no-questions-asked refund regardless of the nominal conditions of the fare."

THIS !! PLEASE

 

[Shawn Ryu]

This is one of the cases where I will weigh in against Amtrak maximizing revenue, but I'd like to see the policy as "If we have to cancel your train and bustitute, we will offer you that option or the option of transferring to a different (still operating) train if one is available at no markup or we will offer you a no-questions-asked refund regardless of the nominal conditions of the fare."

The other thing that I will say is that if Amtrak bustitutes, they should at least partly refund the fare (perhaps shifting everyone to at least low bucket) and definitely refund/credit any accommodation charge (having never run into this, I don't know what the policy is). I'm sorry, but particularly on a longer trip...6-8 hours in a bus is no match for a similar amount of time on a train with even a cafe, to say nothing of hot meal service. I can see an exception when things are noted months in advance (i.e. the Cap), but in general...yeah, a bus isn't a train, and if I paid a good deal for that train ticket, it stands to reason that I'm paying for the train.

Got a full refund last time Amtrak had me bustitute from philly to NYC.

One of the reason why I am suck a fiercely loyal Amtrak customer. Airlines and bus companies dont come anything close to Amtrak in terms of passenger service. IMO.

 

[Anderson]

This is one of the cases where I will weigh in against Amtrak maximizing revenue, but I'd like to see the policy as "If we have to cancel your train and bustitute, we will offer you that option or the option of transferring to a different (still operating) train if one is available at no markup

They already do. It seems the issue is that on the Texas Eagle, perhaps only sleepers were available, which would be an upgrade from what the coaches would cost. Given the limited sleeper capacity on the Texas Eagle, and the fact that many rooms were probably already sold before the reaccommodation took place, you could, perhaps, reaccommodate a dozen (out of potentially hundreds) using that option before the Eagle becomes sold out, then you still have a bunch of other people to take care of.

or we will offer you a no-questions-asked refund regardless of the nominal conditions of the fare."

They already do.

The other thing that I will say is that if Amtrak bustitutes, they should at least partly refund the fare (perhaps shifting everyone to at least low bucket) and definitely refund/credit any accommodation charge (having never run into this, I don't know what the policy is).

They do refund the accommodation charge where the accommodation is not provided. Even in cases where you get bussed through a portion of the route, they will refund the accommodation associated with that portion you didn't get.

Alright, I was unaware of a couple of those conditions (the partial refunding didn't come up in the discussion surrounding the Cap, at least as far as I can recall, but that was also several months back). As to the Texas Eagle situation, I think I know what went wrong...

On the days that work like this happens, the CHI-STL "train" (I think it's an 800-series one) doesn't run on the Eagle because of the canceled intermediate stops, and that's usually the only way to book a ticket CHI-STL on the Eagle (I think) that doesn't involve a sleeper. So this basically triggers an unintended consequence that someone traveling over that routing is either shunted to a bus or has to cough up for a sleeper. That is a problem.

 

[Acela150]

My opinion. Amtrak fulfilled the contract of getting the customer from A to B. While not on a train but they did it.

I agree with trogdor on his statement of the OP has a bad experience and her co workers ride Amtrak on a weekly basis and her experience will change their minds. It's up to them. Whenever I hear someone say they have a bad ride I encourage them to try it again! I'd say a small handful have and came back with positive reports.

So if the OP comes back to post or is reading "behind the scenes" I encourage you to try Amtrak again. I have enjoyable rides all the time, with great crews, interesting passengers, and great scenery. Don't let one bad experience get you down! Amtrak has many enjoyable trains and employees!

Steve

 

[amtrakwolverine]

Some people will never be turned onto train travel. See my post on the NTD report about this woman who said she would never ride the train again cause it was 40 minutes late and it was the worst experience she ever had.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

The idea of anyone spending $1000 on non-refundable hotel accommodations, particularly for a trip a long ways off, and a long distance away sounds a bit fishy to me.

St. Louis to Chicago is not what I would call a "long distance" trip. I've used prepaid rates for hotels all over the country and on other continents and never had a problem. It has literally saved me many thousands of dollars. As an example I managed to turn a $800 hotel bill in Tokyo into a $400 hotel bill just by prepaying. I was able to choose the same location, same property, and same service for half the cost. Sure, I was on the hook if anything went horribly wrong, but that has thankfully been rather rare for me so far. Keep in mind that hotels in Chicago can get rather expensive. $300-400 per night is not uncommon for upper end hotels. If you prepay at a nonrefundable rate you may get it down to $200 per might or less, but if you stay for a week you may have still racked up a $1,000 bill easy. Nothing about this seems the fishy to me. In some ways this detail is what makes the rest of the complaint more believable to me since it helps explain the anger and frustration.

But Amtrak is a travel service provider, not a train trip provider. Their job is to get a person from A to B as safely, and as on schedule as possible.

If any of us really believed that then what reason would we have for choosing Amtrak over any other service? Even if we give Amtrak this out, they're still among the slowest "travel service providers" available with the absolute worst schedules and the fewest possible options for fixing even minor problems. They also have some of the least concerned staff I've ever encountered, and I say that having flown most of the major US airlines. Not everyone is going to be aware of this and Amtrak doesn't exactly advertise that the only solution to most problems is a crummy bus ride devoid of everything that makes train travel special.

Throwing the book at Amtrak for a bustitution in my opinion is a little like throwing the book at a city's rail transit system for bustituting between two stations when work must be done. My take is that Amtrak provided the OP with the means to arrive at their destination as well as they reasonably could and weren't obligated to adjust to the OP's situation.

If being allowed to choose a bus or a refund is "throwing the book" at Amtrak then I'd hate to see what putting the book back on the shelf gets you.

 

[jebr]

My two cents:

1. It's irrelevant whether he paid $1000 on nonrefundable reservations or not in this case. Amtrak is still providing transportation from point A to point B without charging him extra (and I'm assuming for roughly the same amount of time at his destination as before.) Thus, he can still use that reservation if he so chooses, and Amtrak will make sure that he can get there and use it.

2. It would seem to make sense for Amtrak to take half off the ticket cost for people who are bustituted after they purchase their ticket, especially in the case where it's due to something that the average person sees as avoidable or predictable (like maintenance) versus something unavoidable, like a crash. Obviously this wouldn't apply to those who bought a ticket after the bustitution was placed, so long as it's evident when buying the ticket that you're buying a bus ticket, not a train ticket.

3. That being said, the OP is definitely overreacting. Life will throw curveballs sometimes, especially when traveling, and you have to make the best of them. Plus, being overdramatic doesn't really help the situation (and may actually make the complaint seem less valid, since the company can't tell how much you're exaggerating the truth.)

 

[ScottC4746]

Simply said, Amtrak does NOT "blow"!

It does too...it blows it's horn. :giggle: Sorry, I just couldn't resist. :giggle:

 

[Caesar La Rock]

Some people will never be turned onto train travel. See my post on the NTD report about this woman who said she would never ride the train again cause it was 40 minutes late and it was the worst experience she ever had.

40 minutes late, really? I've seen buses 1 hour late and I don't see tourists renting cars left and right around here or saying they will never ride the bus again.

 

[amtrakwolverine]

Some people will never be turned onto train travel. See my post on the NTD report about this woman who said she would never ride the train again cause it was 40 minutes late and it was the worst experience she ever had.

40 minutes late, really? I've seen buses 1 hour late and I don't see tourists renting cars left and right around here or saying they will never ride the bus again.

really i was on the train 2 rows behind this woman and she was going on and on.

 

[the_traveler]

Some people will never be turned onto train travel. See my post on the NTD report about this woman who said she would never ride the train again cause it was 40 minutes late and it was the worst experience she ever had.

40 minutes late, really? I've seen buses 1 hour late and I don't see tourists renting cars left and right around here or saying they will never ride the bus again.

I was on a flight once that was over 3 hours late! And all that was from the time we left the terminal at O'Hare until we left the ground!

 

[Shanghai]

Some people will never be turned onto train travel. See my post on the NTD report about this woman who said she would never ride the train again cause it was 40 minutes late and it was the worst experience she ever had.

40 minutes late, really? I've seen buses 1 hour late and I don't see tourists renting cars left and right around here or saying they will never ride the bus again.

I was on a flight once that was over 3 hours late! And all that was from the time we left the terminal at O'Hare until we left the ground!

What, no Penthouse for the_traveler on the airplane??

 

[NY Penn]

For a depressing sample of (at times unfair, at times not) Amcriticism, just google Amtrak sucks.

It seems, however, that a huge issue is customer service. How come other rail systems manage it, but Amtrak cannot?

 

[the_traveler]

No, but First Class (of course) with free drinks and meal! I did not even feel the delay! :lol: