Rail Pass Revisited

[caravanman]

Hi Folks,

Some of you may remember that I was upset by not being able to use Amtrak trains on my previous trip to America, due to the lack of seats available to International rail pass purchasers, and ended up driving a hire car.

I returned again in September to try my luck, and this time managed to get around the system without any seat availability issues, travelling 12,291 miles in 3 weeks, most of it in coach.

I had a great experience, and hope to do a report at some point, but I am about 6 trips behind on my reports so far..!

I met some real interesting passengers, real characters, and felt like a real hobo after 4 days without a shower (although I did linger in my hotel shower quite a long time at the end of the four days!)

I spoke with a sensible and well informed Amtrak ticket agent at Portland, Or. and he told me that Amtrak had indeed "Quietly changed the rules about international pass tickets, which are now only valid if there is a lowest bucket seat available, and not as before, valid for any available coach seat."

I also met an elderly disabled lady in the Portland "youth hostel" who had had to stay 2 extra nights because her pass was no use, all the lowest price seats were

taken.

I understand that this is a new version of the pass, my complaint is simply that such a big change in terms of use should recieve more publicity, especialy for those of us who had used it previously, and were unaware of the "not so subtle" change in conditions!

Ed B)

 

[AmtrakWPK]

I certainly think you have a valid gripe. Perhaps you need to organize a complaint campaign from your side of the pond, enlist travel agents, and so forth. What they have done is to increase the effective price of travel on the pass by forcing probably a significant percentage of the passholders to buy the pass AND one or more expensive coach seats (or sleeper upgrades) because otherwise they are held hostage with a useless pass. I personally think that changing the rules without notice and without reducing the price of the pass was very poorly thought out, if it was thought out at all. Now it's not a travel pass. It's just a hunting licence for cheap coach seats. It's even conceivable that, depending on where you are starting your travel from and what time of the year you are traveling, you could end up with one or two short route segments, and 13 or 28 days of being stuck waiting for a seat (or paying for the pass AND coach seats). At the VERY least, if there are no seats available on your requested day of travel, the pass expiration date should be extended by one day, EACH time it happens for that passholder. Of course, for the passholder who has a date certain to return home (an already purchased airline ticket), that doesn't help, and in that case the passholder should receive a refund of at least that one day's prorated cost of the pass. That still doesn't recompense the partially ruined holiday, but it would be a start.

 

[frj1983]

It seems to me that the real question then becomes:

Why bother getting the International Pass at all???

It would seem to me to be easier for you to plan ahead, go to Amtrak.com and find the cheapest tickets available for your trip and purchase them. Does anyone think this is Amtrak's sneaky way of slowly phasing the whole thing out?

 

[AmtrakWPK]

It seems to me that the real question then becomes:Why bother getting the International Pass at all???

That's a very good and relevant question, but unfortunately it will not occur to the uninformed international visitor who is about to be backstabbed by Amtrak, because frequently they won't realize what they're up against until they have gotten partway through their holiday, and while attempting to book the next segments of their trip they discover that Amtrak won't let them use the pass because the low bucket seats are already booked on their desired train(s), possibly for several days.
It's more like a sneaky way to try to increase revenue at the expense of international goodwill, by "sticking it" to the international visitor to this country who has the misfortune of having purchased an Amtrak pass under the mistaken impression that it will actually result in his or her getting a seat on those trains, and instead we end up forcing that unwary and unprepared international visitor to pay for his or her seat twice: Once with the railpass, and then a second time to actually have a seat to put his or her tush into because there were no seats available for the pass they had already purchased.

Actually, finding out that there WERE empty coach seats on that very train after Amtrak told you that there WEREN'T any such seats for your pass would be a wonderful way to enrage and infuriate the international guest. Waiting around for several days for a seat to become available, while your vacation days melt away, is not generally an option. And certainly for the visitor stuck in some out-of-the-way location, the two words most likely to be reverberating through that person's head (after the expletives have been deleted) are NEVER AGAIN!!!! The worst situation would be where the visitor already has hotel reservations or has friends or family waiting for them, but is unable to get there on Amtrak even though those trains in fact HAD empty, unsold coach seats, and the visitor is then forced to buy one or more very expensive airline tickets in order to salvage the vacation. If it were me, and Amtrak pulled this kind of sneaky back-stab, I would NOT buy the more expensive coach seat - I'd be inclined to tell them what they could do with their railpass, and I'd arrange other transportation, either by renting a car or flying. Then when I got home I'd make it a personal project to cause Amtrak as much financial loss of business as I possibly could by bad-mouthing them to anybody and everybody, writing letters to newspapers, and so forth. Why this outcome doesn't seem to occur to Amtrak is completely beyond me. This seems to me to be one more monumental blunder by Amtrak. What is it about this company that their headquarters seems to keep hitting itself over the head with the cosmic STUPID stick?

 

[caravanman]

I think you have fully grasped the difficulties of using the pass in its current form, and it seems to me to be an attempt to make trains a less popular

travel option for overseas visitors. At the same time as the restrictions were introduced, the price of the pass leapt from $295 to $389 for a 15 day off peak pass.

(Strange to say, the Amtrak.com webpage still states: UNLIMITED travel in whichever zones you buy a pass for..)

I do weigh up the other options before I buy the pass each time, and will continue to do so, but most visitors are not especialy train "savvy".

I feel the pass still offers pretty good value most of the time, but the new restrictions on seat availability need to be more prominently advertised.

Ed B)

 

[Everydaymatters]

Has anyone ever taken the time to figure out if it was the same price, higher price, or lower price to just book each segment without a pass on a trip they were planning to take or had already taken?

If you planned the trip say 6 or 7 months ahead and booked it, any idea what the price difference would be?

 

[gyuri_ft]

(Strange to say, the Amtrak.com webpage still states: UNLIMITED travel in whichever zones you buy a pass for..)

That would actually qualify them for a date in the court. "Unlimited" is "Unlimited" and "Truth in Advertising" is "Truth in Advertising".

BTW/1: I am not really surprised, these days railpasses in Europe became a major tourist trapp and ripp-off. So Amtrak just followed the trend. Wish, they would follow other European trands, too.

BTW/2: V675 code does not exist anymore.