Amtrak On-line Reservations Trick

[PRR 60]

One of annoying idiosyncrasies of the Amtrak.com reservation system is the inexplicable manner in which the date and time you enter for your trip reverts to today’s date and 6:00am every time you return to the starting page. For example, you want price a trip from PHL to ORL in October. You start with 10/1, 4:00pm, enter the number of passengers, select your accommodations, and get the price. Now, you want to try 10/2 to see if the price varies. Page back to the start, and the date has reset to today; the time has reset to 6:00am. To get the data for October 2, you must reenter the date and time from scratch. It’s a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.

Now try this: Go to the Reservations home page. Enter your origin and destinations. Enter your number of passengers. Now, enter the date for yesterday. As I’m writing this it is June 5: I would enter June 4. Click “Show Schedules”, and you will get an error message; “The date you selected is in the past…”. Now, enter the actual date and time you want (say October 1, 4:00pm), and proceed as normal to the fare page. Get the fare for 10/1, and page back to the starting page. The original error message will still be displayed, but so will all your entered info with your desired date and time unchanged. Now, you can just increment the day by one, and price the trip for the next day. Or, you can leave the date and time unchanged, and try a different O&D (say PHL to JAX). Or you can leave the date unchanged, and just incriment the time. Every time you page back to the start, the error message will still appear, but all the data you entered, including date and time, will be unchanged.

Another minor victory over stupidity.

 

[AlanB]

PRR60,

Neat trick, I hadn't tried that one.

However what I usually to avoid that date problem, is to click the "Multi City Trips" link on the reservations page. While my journey may not require more than one city, this page does not keep erasing my dates, times, and city pair when I hit the back button to change one of the elements.

 

[Superliner Diner]

The above problem is obviously a programming glitch, one that many people have noticed and complained about. Nobody, however, has been able to explain it adequately to the people at Amtrak so that they fix it. It's been a nuisance since Day One of the website. I've tried writing to them, through e-mail and snail mail means. Apparently the original programmer cannot be found, or he's in hiding someplace.

 

[jdwolfskill]

Speaking of AMTRAK programming glitches, here's another one I found with the AMTRAK website reservations system. Very often when you enter a round trip itinerary the system will tell you that no service is aviailable for the return portion of your journey. The problem here is usually a THRUWAY bus connection. For example, a trip from Kingston, RI (KIN) to Laughlin, NV (LNV) requires you to leave train #3 at Needles, CA and take a bus to Laughlin. The problem is that after stopping in Laughlin, the bus also continues to Las Vegas (LVS) where it terminates. For some reason, the system is not programmed to look for intermediate THRUWAY bus stops between stations. On the return journey, the system sees only a THRUWAY connection between Las Vegas and Needles, CA.. and decides there is no service available from Laughlin. The solution here is to make Las Vegas your destination (a difference of 90 miles), then hash it out with the ticket clerk when you get where you're going if you want a refund for the difference. I'm not sure if this is a system wide thing or not. Has anyone seen this problem on other routes? I, too, have complained to AMTRAK about the glitches already mentioned in this thread, to no avail. I think it's pretty sad that AMTRAK doesn't at least have a few minutes to look into these problems and fix them. They are not minor annoyances when you're paying good money to travel, or need to make a reservation in a hurry.

 

[jccollins]

jdwolfskill - I believe the glitch you mentioned is just for that route. Other returning connections seem to work fine.. I book trips from MTZ to CWT all the time. CWT is an intermediate motorcoach stop along the route and shows up just fine for the return trip.

 

[amtrakadirondack]

PRR60,
Neat trick, I hadn't tried that one.

However what I usually to avoid that date problem, is to click the "Multi City Trips" link on the reservations page. While my journey may not require more than one city, this page does not keep erasing my dates, times, and city pair when I hit the back button to change one of the elements.

That's the same thing I do, it helps.