About a year ago, when I booked my AGR point redemption 'joy ride', the inept agent on the phone apparently let the computer automatically assign a room (I'm thinking there's no choice in that, in fact, that's the way assigned FC seats on the Acela works) and then she has to go back and 'choose' a different roomette. I much prefer #14, or any other lower roomettes. On a 'through' trip PDX-LAX-CHI (#14/421) she apparently cancelled the original booking and when she tried to lock in the right one, the price jumped 20K points! Perhaps after her banging away on the keyboard for another 5 minutes or so, she managed to get yet another 20K points on top of that! I told her to cancel the entire thing. About 10 minutes later, I went to the Amtrak booking site and checked the same PDX-CHI routing and the number of points went back to the original number I saw. I then called, got someone who KNEW what they were doing, and she got #14 on both trains and the CONO that I was connecting to as well!
Knowing that there is now an out-sourced reservation center plus the original one at Amtrak Philadelphia, the chances of getting one of the 'newbies' is 50% or more. Throw in that they're likely still facing a no-so-up-to-date Arrow reservation system, there's a lot to learn, and even more tricks of the trade that come from experience and being taught by others. If only we could push a button that indicates 'well experienced rep requested'. Maybe, just maybe, when they roll out the seat assignment process for all business class, it'll spill over to sleeper space and we can logon and modify our room assignments without charge.
If you've already booked the trip and want the roomette numbers changed, call them up and request to modify the reservation...the key word is 'modify'. Otherwise, they'll do a cancel & rebook and as your old roomette stays unavailable for a period of time, the lack of available rooms will cause the price to increase. Also, if already booked, call immediately, as waiting hours or days may cause other roomettes to be sold thus driving up the prices.