Does Amtrak Ever Deliberately Overbook?

[PRR 60]

Amtrak guarantees every reservation-holder a seat on long-distance trains; that was actually published somewhere in the contract of carriage, as I remember reading it a few years ago...

I suppose the seats in the dining and cafe/lounge cars are in fact seats, though! With the longest LD train maxing out at somewhere under 390 coach seats, 3% would be only 12 seats, which is well within the cafe car seating capacity.

I was riding from Houston to New Orleans on the Sunset, and a couple of people didn't have seats and had to sit in the lounge car.

Here is the actual wording.

Each passenger paying a fare will be entitled to a seat, to the extent coach seats are available.

In other words, as long as there are seats, you are entitled to a seat. Otherwise,... well you can fill in the blank. Policies like that always amuse me.

 

[jis]

I just decided to look up what Amtrak says in its Conditions for Transportation regarding seats and reservations. These are the precise words:

• Each passenger paying a fare will be entitled to a seat, to the extent coach seats are available.
• Passengers are entitled to one seat per fare, to ensure other paying passengers are not excluded.
• Unless specific seats are assigned, seating is on a first come - first served basis. On unreserved trains there are no guaranteed seats.
• Seating arrangements will be made without regard to race, color, gender, creed or national origin.
• Amtrak reserves the right, whenever operating conditions require, to transfer passengers from one car or train to another en route.

Notice that it says the following:
1. Each paying passenger is entitled to a seat if one is available

2. No guarantee of seat on non-reserved trains

3. Right to transfer is reserved

Strictly speaking it says nothing about a seat being guaranteed explicitly under any circumstances. This has been carefully worded by lawyers I bet.

Any lawyer would have to be on something potent to make a promise of a guaranteed seat, unless s/he is willing to cough up a lot of money in compensation.

I believe that contrary to some popular sentiments expressed in various places, the reserved trains have nothing to do with:

(a) Safety

(b) Guaranteeing anything.

It forms the foundation for enabling inventory control and yield management, and that is the end of it. It therefore allows one to define the inventory on a train to be 103% of actual seats, if it statistically suits the purpose of maximizing yield without bringing down the wrath of the customers upon oneself. This is a more controlled environment than unreserved where one would have no basis to stop selling tickets and would have no idea on which train a specific ticket is actually used thus making it very difficult to do effective yield management.

 

[Karl1459]

Its been 10 years of so but on a southbound CS we were overbooked by 30 or so PDX to Eugene. YES 30! OBS requested that coach passengers defere sitting in the SL until we cleared Eugene so the overbookees could have seats. After Eugene everyone ticketed apparently had seats.

 

[MiRider]

I ignored this thread until I read this on Amtrak's FB page in a post about dining on the train:

Pfffft they cancelled all dinner reservations on our train cause they horrendously oversold it and need the seats for people

I can't imagine.
Once on the Pere Marquette, a couple of people had to sit in the seats in the cafe car.
Then, last year, on the CZ they made an announcement that every seat on the train would be needed - I think it was around Omaha - and a giant group of track workers got on the train.

They were in the cafe and the SSL, don't know about the Diner but they all got off in Galesburg.

On that same FB post, another guy wrote this:

Evidently these other folks had better experience than us.. the food was barely ok.. and the service was HORRIBLE.. very rude people on the entire train! We even paid for 4 seats and only got 3 so our 3year old had to sit in lap the whole 7 hour train ride!! HORRIBLE.. will NEVER ride again!

Just have to say that I'm surprised.
I'd definitely be PO'd, that's for sure.

Link to Amtrak FB post