Made my reservation-wacky fare findings

[Bill631]

Hello,

I'd like to share what happend to me this week regarding my upcoming trip to Texas.

On Monday July 24, I checked pricing on Amtrak's website for the following itinerary:

August 20 NYC to WAS on train 143, regional service, coach seat

August 20 WAS to Chi on train 29, Capitol Ltd, standard roomette

August 21 Chi to Longview on train 21, Texas Eagle, standard roomette

with connecting bus service to Houston

The website quoted the price as $507.00 total

I don't remember the price exact breakdown of each segment.

I didn't reserve on the website because I wasn't ready to purchase my ticket.

So I called the 800 number and checked the price again with a reservations agent, and she confirmed the price of $507.00. She said I had until Friday, July 28 to purchase my ticket.

I checked the pricing on it daily, and it kept saying $507.00.

So here is where it gets wacky. On Thursday morning I planned to call back and buy my ticket with my credit card. Before I picked up the phone I checked the website. Lo and behold the price on Thursday morning was now $464.00!

So, I called and re-booked it at the lower price, and was told I now had until Sunday to buy the ticket.

I decided to wait until Sunday to do so. On Friday morning I checked again, and the price was back up to $507.00!

Basically, I wanted to know why that trip had a lower fare posted just for that one Thursday?

I am not so worried about the $47.00 price difference per se, but the whole pricing system seems a bit wacky. It would seem the prices would get higher closer to the departure date, but this seems not to be always true.

Bill B)

 

[Trogdor]

It would seem the prices would get higher closer to the departure date, but this seems not to be always true.
Bill B)

It's possible that there was a cancellation by someone who either had a reservation or an actual ticket for a lower fare bucket. That space could have been released back into the reservations system at the lower fare.

 

[MrFSS]

So here is where it gets wacky. On Thursday morning I planned to call back and buy my ticket with my credit card. Before I picked up the phone I checked the website. Lo and behold the price on Thursday morning was now $464.00! So, I called and re-booked it at the lower price, and was told I now had until Sunday to buy the ticket.

I decided to wait until Sunday to do so. On Friday morning I checked again, and the price was back up to $507.00!

It is one of those, "consider it my lucky day!"

 

[AlanB]

Bill,

First a quick discussion on Amtrak’s fare system

There are five "buckets" (levels) of sleeping car accommodations charges and space is inventoried among them in an attempt to maximize revenue to Amtrak. They are designated by the letters S, A, B, C, D. S is highest, D is lowest. Obviously, the earlier you make reservations, the better your chances of getting a room at a lower "bucket." However, on busy-season trains such as the California Zephyr in summer or the City of New Orleans and Crescent at Mardi Gras, you will find few D rooms, even if you look a year in advance, because Amtrak knows they don't have to cut fares to fill those rooms. But in slow season, such as January on the Coast Starlight, you probably will find many more.

There are "buckets" of Coach fares, too: Y, YA, YB, YC, YD, and they are allocated in much the same way on most long-distance trains and on some Corridor trains. A passenger with a Sleeping Car reservation pays the lowest, D-bucket Coach fare as the Rail Fare portion of the ticket, regardless of whether YD is actually available in Coach inventory or not.

So now turning to your recent observations, most likely there was someone who had made an unsecured reservation and they didn’t pick up their tickets within the allotted time period. It’s also possible that someone cancelled a paid reservation. Either way, someone was holding the last room at let’s say the A bucket price for example. When you priced things originally, you would have received the S bucket price, since there were no more A rooms available.

When the cancellation occurred, an A bucket room once again became available. Now if you actually made a reservation on that Thursday, even an unsecured one with an agent, then two things happened. One you locked in that price and as long as you pick up those tickets before Sunday, you will be guaranteed that price. Two, you gobbled up the last A room and kicked the bucket back up to the S level. If you didn't actually make a reservation, then someone else got that cheaper room and you’ll be stuck with paying the higher price.

I hope that this makes it clear, but please don't hesitate to ask if you still have questions.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the info Alan.

I also noticed that when I rebooked the trip to get the lower price, the roomette numbers changed. I am now booked in different roomettes altogether, but at a lower price.

Your explanation of the fare buckets and cancellations would certainly explain this.

I am going to call tomorrow to purchase the tickets.

Bill

 

[AlanB]

I also noticed that when I rebooked the trip to get the lower price, the roomette numbers changed. I am now booked in different roomettes altogether, but at a lower price.

Bill,

I wouldn't have even been surprised to find that you were now booked into a different sleeping car.

 

[Trogdor]

Thanks for the info Alan.I also noticed that when I rebooked the trip to get the lower price, the roomette numbers changed. I am now booked in different roomettes altogether, but at a lower price.

It's possible (even likely) that the computer didn't release your original rooms until after you had completed the transaction. Since the rooms were already reserved (even if they were reserved by you), the computer wouldn't let the agent take those rooms as he/she was making what essentially amounted to a new reservation at a lower fare.

I think I got that right, anyway. Arrow (Amtrak's reservation system) can be a tricky thing sometimes.

 

[Anthony]

Yep, it probably should have released the room, but the agent may have initiated a new booking and then canceled the first one later, causing what you described.

 

[cbender]

In the event that a paid reservation is cancelled, does the available room return to the system at the fare bucket it was originally purchased at? Alan - your post earlier seemed to suggest that it does, which seems a little unusual to me. What would make more sense is if the room was repriced at the best currently available bucket.

I know that for airlines a ticket purchased from a discount fare bucket that is later cancelled will almost certainly not free up availability in the original fare bucket. Instead it will end up in a more expensive bucket (chosen, presumably, by voodoo magic).

 

[AlanB]

In the event that a paid reservation is cancelled, does the available room return to the system at the fare bucket it was originally purchased at? Alan - your post earlier seemed to suggest that it does, which seems a little unusual to me. What would make more sense is if the room was repriced at the best currently available bucket.

I'll be honest with you, I'm not 100% sure just what happens, but I do know that a cancelled room can affect the current pricing. My understanding of how it's supposed to work goes like this.

Lets say that it requires 15 roomettes to be sold on the Capitol Limited to kick the bucket from the B level to the A level. I reserve the 15th roomette today at 9:00 AM EDT getting the B bucket price. You check prices at 1:00 PM EDT, you'll see the remaining roomette's priced at the A bucket price. On Wednesday I decide that I can't take my trip. Assuming no other reservations have been made since Monday, if you were to check reservations again, you would now get a roomette at the B bucket price because I let that room go.

On the other hand, if someone else had come along and made yet another reservation on say Tuesday, that now makes 17 roomettes sold, so my cancellation on Wednesday would leave my cancelled room priced in the A bucket.

Now again, that's my understanding of how it's supposed to work, but I have seen some evidence that would suggest that if it was a B room it will always be a B room, regardless of where the remaining of the rooms are in the bucket system.

 

[AlanB]

By the way, I actually simplified things a bit in my example by just counting the total rooms on the train. AFAIK, the buckets are actually by car, not the overall train. Hence my comment to Bill that I wouldn't have been surprised to see him not only changes rooms, but also change cars.

This means that were one to have mobility problems and want to have the sleeper closest to the dining car, calling an agent and making that request could actually result in a higher price, than if one just accepts the next available room in whatever car has the next lowest priced room.

 

[Bigval109]

In the event that a paid reservation is cancelled, does the available room return to the system at the fare bucket it was originally purchased at? Alan - your post earlier seemed to suggest that it does, which seems a little unusual to me. What would make more sense is if the room was repriced at the best currently available bucket.

I'll be honest with you, I'm not 100% sure just what happens, but I do know that a cancelled room can affect the current pricing. My understanding of how it's supposed to work goes like this.

Lets say that it requires 15 roomettes to be sold on the Capitol Limited to kick the bucket from the B level to the A level. I reserve the 15th roomette today at 9:00 AM EDT getting the B bucket price. You check prices at 1:00 PM EDT, you'll see the remaining roomette's priced at the A bucket price. On Wednesday I decide that I can't take my trip. Assuming no other reservations have been made since Monday, if you were to check reservations again, you would now get a roomette at the B bucket price because I let that room go.

On the other hand, if someone else had come along and made yet another reservation on say Tuesday, that now makes 17 roomettes sold, so my cancellation on Wednesday would leave my cancelled room priced in the A bucket.

Now again, that's my understanding of how it's supposed to work, but I have seen some evidence that would suggest that if it was a B room it will always be a B room, regardless of where the remaining of the rooms are in the bucket system.

Man You are SMART.

 

[Bigval109]

In the event that a paid reservation is cancelled, does the available room return to the system at the fare bucket it was originally purchased at? Alan - your post earlier seemed to suggest that it does, which seems a little unusual to me. What would make more sense is if the room was repriced at the best currently available bucket.

I'll be honest with you, I'm not 100% sure just what happens, but I do know that a cancelled room can affect the current pricing. My understanding of how it's supposed to work goes like this.

Lets say that it requires 15 roomettes to be sold on the Capitol Limited to kick the bucket from the B level to the A level. I reserve the 15th roomette today at 9:00 AM EDT getting the B bucket price. You check prices at 1:00 PM EDT, you'll see the remaining roomette's priced at the A bucket price. On Wednesday I decide that I can't take my trip. Assuming no other reservations have been made since Monday, if you were to check reservations again, you would now get a roomette at the B bucket price because I let that room go.

On the other hand, if someone else had come along and made yet another reservation on say Tuesday, that now makes 17 roomettes sold, so my cancellation on Wednesday would leave my cancelled room priced in the A bucket.

Now again, that's my understanding of how it's supposed to work, but I have seen some evidence that would suggest that if it was a B room it will always be a B room, regardless of where the remaining of the rooms are in the bucket system.

 

[Sam Damon]

Here's another bit of wackiness in ARROW.

Select Greensburg, PA --> Gainesville, GA for a round trip, say a week or two out. On the time I tried it this evening, I received the "sorry no service available" message from the website.

Select the same city pair for a one way trip on the same date, and ARROW kicks out the routing of #42 to PHL, connecting with #19 to GNS.

Any bright ideas on this anomaly?

 

[AlanB]

That one's easy. The northbound Crecent arrives too late into Philly to connect with the westbound Pennsy. So when you book just the southbound, it's a viable trip. Book a round trip, and the system balks since there is no same day connection in Philly coming north.