Actually you could have cancelled without a fee, you just would not have gotten a refund to your credit card. You would have needed to take a voucher good towards a future trip. This is an option that you'd never get with most airlines, unless you booked the least restrictive/expensive fare.
That might be okay for most people, Alan, but it would have done me absolutely no good at all. I live on a VA disability of less than $1,000 per month, which doesn't allow me to go much of anywhere. The friend I was going to visit in New Orleans paid for my entire trip. So if Amtrak had given me a voucher, it would have just gone to waste, and either I would not have been able to go visit my friend at all, or my friend would have had to pay for airline tickets
in addition to the (wasted) rail fare.
And I do appreciate that Jaylah; as well as the fact that not knowing placed a greater financial burden on your friend and caused you considerable fret & worry. I'm not trying to make light of the situation, just to explain things. And the fact remains that Amtrak's refund policies are far more liberal than most airlines' policies are. If one is paying top dollar for one's airline tickets, then policies are more liberal. But if you've booked anything less than the most expensive seats, you're going to find major restrictions on what you can and can't do, as well as what you get back if you cancel.
As I've said, I do understand that Amtrak doesn't control mother nature, and they also can't control the railroads that own the tracks they operate on. But given the extent of the flooding, this train was not fully operational from April 26th until May 21st. If the tracks flooded enough to shut down service by April 26, it does seem a bit unreasonable to me that they didn't know the train wouldn't be running on May 10th until just days prior to that. This was obviously not a "day by day" thing. It was much more major than that, and shame on Amtrak for not keeping either their customer service people or ticketed passengers current.
Once again, Amtrak is totally dependant on the host RR's for information. They control when the trains run. And they control the flow of information, assuming that there is any, to Amtrak. If the freight RR says to Amtrak, "we hope to be back in service on Tuesday" Amtrak isn't going to cancel any trains past Tuesday. In most cases however the freight RR's simply say, "we expect our line to be out of service until X." So Amtrak cancels everything through X. Two days before X the freight RR comes along and says, "now we expect it to be Y." So Amtrak responds by canceling all trains through Y. And on and on until such time as the line is reopened.
Amtrak was basically in the dark as much as you were. They aren't on the scene, they can't walk down the tracks to see if the freight company is lying or telling the truth about where the water level is. They have to rely on the host RR and the host RR's simply aren't that good about communicating. Probably in part because if they tell Amtrak what they really expect, then people shipping things will find out and cancel the shipments on them.
Finally, as I mentioned earlier, I do still agree that having nothing on their website is dead wrong! I can understand not canceling trains 2 weeks out, but I cannot understand or condone the utter lack of info on their website, as well as the often conflicting information given out by agents when one calls up. That is inexcusable!
And AirTran
does give refunds in the event of a flight cancellation. You have your choice between being booked on the next available flight, or a refund. Not just a voucher.
Refund Policy
Passengers entitled to refunds for flight cancellations or other reasons may apply for a refund through any AirTran Airways representative at any AirTran Airways gate, ticket counter, Reservations or Customer Relations office.
And so does Amtrak. Once Amtrak officially cancelled the train you were entitled to a 100% refund. Your issue came about because you wanted to cancel before Amtrak officially cancelled the train.
hboy: I do agree with George Harris, I would go ahead and take the bustitution.
