Double Booking a week apart? Wha???

[JoeBas]

Okay so...

Have an AGR trip back home from vacation PHL-HOS expecting to leave PHL on 19 this afternoon. Found out when I woke up this morning that my grandmother passed unexpectedly last night, which obviously puts my plans in a bit of a boggle - family is not sure how long it will take to figure out when the services will be, and likely won't know until early-mid afternoon, and I have to be back at work a week from Monday due to other people's vacation plans.

I hop on amtrak.com and see that there are rooms on the 19 leaving a week from today, and decide on the brilliant plan to reserve the rooms on a "paid" reservation, and have them do the 24-hour hold for phone reservations. This will give enough time until early this afternoon to figure out if the services can be before next Thursday, or if they'll be later, in which case I can just go today as planned. This way, I have until around 3:30 to decide whether to leave today, or a week from now.

No go. Amtrak tells me this would be a "Double booking", and not allowed their policy.

Wait... what?

Travel is a full week apart. At no time would the two reservations overlap. I *THEORETICALLY* could be taking the one trip back to HOS today, FLY back to NJ, and do it again, just because that's how I roll. I mean, that's like saying someone who reserves the 4:30PM Train each day going home is double booking because they're traveling the same route at two different times.

Can someone please explain this one to me in a way that a rational human being could understand?

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Curious. Did you book a round trip or two one-ways?

 

[JoeBas]

It's a one-way rezzie... due to time constraints we flew up, and used AGR points for a return trip.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

How much of this situation did you discuss with the agent? I generally try to avoid volunteering anything that doesn't need to be said and to give as little information as possible when responding to inquiries. So far as I can tell the Information Age is all about keeping your mouth shut. Otherwise anything you say can and will be used against you. You can call back, and I probably would if I were you, but if this agent wrote anything down in your file then it could be a lot harder to correct on subsequent attempts. Best of luck either way.

 

[JoeBas]

I've assumed that we'll get the arrangements made within a week, and just went ahead and moved my trip from today to next week accordingly.

I'm just looking for clarification on what possible grounds this would constitute a "double booking".

I ended up telling the agent that I'd just have someone else book the rooms with a hold, and cancel them as necessary, to make sure they'd be available for me. Easy peasy.

Ironic part? Roy Orbison was sinigng "Anything you want... you got it" at me the whole time I was on hold. Anything, apparently, except a "double booking".

 

[Devil's Advocate]

So far as I am aware the double booking rule is only intended to apply when two or more trips are physically impossible, or at least nearly impossible, and thus are virtually guaranteed to result in at least one last minute modification or cancellation. So long as your trips are reasonably possible, with or without use of vehicles/watercraft/aircraft as intermediaries, there is no specific rule against that. At least to my knowledge.

 

[JoeBas]

Thanks... this is my interpreation as well, which is why I found their response so... well, confusing.

I did go into some explaining of what I wanted to do, mainly because I wanted to make sure that if I'd booked the reservation on the phone for next week as a cash reservation with a 24 hour hold, that I could then come in later and pay for it with points instead. You know how Byzantine Amtrak can be with this kind of stuff... witness my situation!

 

[amamba]

Thanks... this is my interpreation as well, which is why I found their response so... well, confusing.

I did go into some explaining of what I wanted to do, mainly because I wanted to make sure that if I'd booked the reservation on the phone for next week as a cash reservation with a 24 hour hold, that I could then come in later and pay for it with points instead. You know how Byzantine Amtrak can be with this kind of stuff... witness my situation!

well that's why they said it was a double booking then. You have them too much information. If you had just called and said I want to reserve this trip you probably would have been fine.