Anyone else having trouble with Amsnag today?

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For me, the major advantage of Version 1 was the the Coach fare was not combined with any of the Sleeper upcharges and each was displayed separately. It looked like this:

CHIswcLAXa.jpg

That made it simpler for me to find all or most of the buckets when making a bucket chart for all the LD trains, or a group of these:

4 May 2017 EB Fare Buckets.jpg

BTW, a spot check of some LD trains revealed that there was a fare increase of about 1 to 2% at the beginning of the new fiscal year.
 
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Amtrak completely redesigned the old fare page; i.e., the one before the one that was recently changed. So that required a lot of changes to V1. I going to throw it out there without warranty. There may be some minor bugs; and the fact that the new and old Amtrak websites (not Amsnag) versions don't always agree doesn't help.
 
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PaulM said:
Amtrak completely redesigned the old fare page; i.e., the one before the one that was recently changed. So that required a lot of changes to V1. I going to throw it out there without warranty. There may be some minor bugs; and the fact that the new and old Amtrak websites (not Amsnag) versions don't always agree doesn't help.
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Thanks for making Version 1 available again. A quick look-see revealed this bug: when a Roomette was sold out (as verified by Arrow) Version 1 would display the high bucket Bedroom upcharge, doing so for CHI to NYP on 9 Nov on the Cardinal and on 25 Nov on the LSL.

That's not a big problem for me because I know (or have estimated) what the values of all 296 buckets were on the LD trains at the close of FY2017 and can spot this anomaly.

But even with that, happy to see it available again. It'll make it much easier to create a new chart showing all the buckets if I ever decide to put another one together.
 
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PaulM said:
Amtrak completely redesigned the old fare page; i.e., the one before the one that was recently changed. So that required a lot of changes to V1. I going to throw it out there without warranty. There may be some minor bugs; and the fact that the new and old Amtrak websites (not Amsnag) versions don't always agree doesn't help.
Click to expand...
AmSnag2 Fare Watcher has sent me significant reductions on roomette charges twice for multiple rooms (4-5) on Nov 1 #3 SWC CHI-LAX. I called Amtrak reservations immediately on both occasions, but was told there were no price changes. Would this probably be caused by the Amtrak Arrow changes as well? Manual Fare Check in Amsnag 2 doesn't show the lower bucket prices either.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum
 
Thank you, PaulM, for AmSnag, both versions.

I have had version 2 send multiple changes. On at least two occasions, the same message reported multiple reductions in accommodation prices (from the same starting price to different new prices, for the same accommodation) with the same timestamp. This isn't a big deal, because I always check amtrak.com before calling, but I sure was salivating when I got notified that my $1,400 fare had dropped to under $300 (and to under $600, and to under $1,000). Alas, amtrak.com said the fare was unchanged.

Any guesses as to why there would be three price reductions in the same minute?
 
willem said:
Thank you, PaulM, for AmSnag, both versions.

I have had version 2 send multiple changes. On at least two occasions, the same message reported multiple reductions in accommodation prices (from the same starting price to different new prices, for the same accommodation) with the same timestamp. This isn't a big deal, because I always check amtrak.com before calling, but I sure was salivating when I got notified that my $1,400 fare had dropped to under $300 (and to under $600, and to under $1,000). Alas, amtrak.com said the fare was unchanged.

Any guesses as to why there would be three price reductions in the same minute?
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Yes, first and foremost Thank You PaulM! This is exactly what happens to me, but I'm drooling instead of salivating [emoji2]when I see some of the huge price drops coming across. Once had four drops and one increase at the same time.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum
 
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niemi24s said:
A quick look-see revealed this bug: when a Roomette was sold out (as verified by Arrow) Version 1 would display the high bucket Bedroom upcharge, doing so for CHI to NYP on 9 Nov on the Cardinal and on 25 Nov on the LSL.
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I believe it is fixed now. Keep those bugs coming. :p

As far as the fare watch is concerned, I haven't had a chance to look at it yet.
 
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I've added the low bucket rail fare to version 1. This is useful for those who like to reconcile the results with Amtrak's output since it is this value (not necessarily the coach fare) that is added to the accommodation charge(s) to come up with the total.
 
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ChuckL said:
AmSnag2 Fare Watcher has sent me significant reductions on roomette charges twice for multiple rooms (4-5) on Nov 1 #3 SWC CHI-LAX. I called Amtrak reservations immediately on both occasions, but was told there were no price changes. Would this probably be caused by the Amtrak Arrow changes as well? Manual Fare Check in Amsnag 2 doesn't show the lower bucket prices either.
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Looking at a log I keep, I've noticed this. Ordinarily when an email reports a fare drop that turns out to not be valid, I assume there was another change between the time the fare was scraped and the user read the email and checked with Amtrak. Unless of course you checked with Amtrak the minute you received the email (I'm assuming the email gets sent at the same time as the fares were checked). But what people are reporting recently can't be correct. I've also noticed multiple changes to the same accommodation at exactly the same time, which can't be correct.

As I mentioned previously, I haven't had a chance to look at the fare watch program; but I'm at a loss to know why Fare Watch would have a problem since it uses the same algorithm to retrieve fares as Amsnag V2 (which seems to be working properly, as you observed) to retrieve fares. The comparison between the old and new fares and sending the email shouldn't have been affected by Amtrak's change.

In any event, I'm working on it. But it could take a while. It's difficult to set up test cases since I'm depending on Amtrak to provide a critical input.
 
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Thanks to Paul's efforts on AmSnag, the following chart of fare buckets was compiled with only a few hours of effort:

22 Oct 2017 Amtrak Fare Buckets.jpg

No estimates were made of missing bucket values as was done previously. Any increases were quite modest, being in the 1% to 2% range. Sleeper upcharges for the CZ and EB were unchanged from the previous fiscal year..
 
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Every so often I'm still getting the fare watch bug that shows multiple alerts all at once. But I've reinstated fare watch V2 anyway. You will have to reenter any itineraries you entered before the problem.
 
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Again, thank you for your efforts.

I have a feature request. When Amsnag sends an email notifying me of a fare reduction, it would help me if it would tell me my current fare and accommodation, rather than just the fare. Sometimes I reserve a roomette and sometimes a bedroom and I don't always remember which. I'm hoping it would be easy to record both the fare and class of service and include them in the automatic emails. Thanks for considering this.
 
willem said:
Again, thank you for your efforts.

I have a feature request. When Amsnag sends an email notifying me of a fare reduction, it would help me if it would tell me my current fare and accommodation, rather than just the fare. Sometimes I reserve a roomette and sometimes a bedroom and I don't always remember which. I'm hoping it would be easy to record both the fare and class of service and include them in the automatic emails. Thanks for considering this.
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I'll look into that once I'm sure most of the bugs have been swatted.
 

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