Refund fee is increasing to 20%

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Allypet

Allypet

Service Attendant
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Jul 17, 2012
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I just booked an AT trip and was told the refund fee is increasing to 20% as of 8/15. Also the last cancelling date has been changed on some trips. As far as I can tell sleeping accommodations are still 15 days, but reserved coach and Acela business class increased to 48 hours, instead of 24. I guess too many people wanted refunds instead of a evoucher.
 
bmjhagen9426 said:
What about the Flexible fares (the highest coach bucket), and unreserved coach?
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This is what the cancellation and exchange policy says about flexible reserved coach or Acela Business fares:

Tickets sold as a Flexible fare are fully refundable and will not be charged a fee.

It's not clear (says that it's charged a 10% refund fee) but it sounds like the refund fee is going up for unreserved coach. Even then, the tickets should be valid as long as they're not used.
 
Cho Cho Charlie said:
I am going to guess that maybe AGR cancellations will increase from 10% to 20% in points?
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I'm guessing no. An awards redemption seems to straddle the line between a cash fare and funny money. There's no means to apply a redemption to an eVoucher, so I'm not sure why the penalty would need to be that high.
 
But you could say that about it now.

The cash penalty is 10%, if you want an e-voucher for future travel. For AGR awards, it's 10%. Since you can only redeem an award for future travel, why is there a 10% penalty? :huh:
 
the_traveler said:
But you could say that about it now.

The cash penalty is 10%, if you want an e-voucher for future travel. For AGR awards, it's 10%. Since you can only redeem an award for future travel, why is there a 10% penalty? :huh:
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Maybe it's time for an eVoucher where the currency is points instead of dollars.

I have cancelled a couple of tickets under AGR 2.0. I was OK with losing the 10%, as opposed to losing it all. I've cancelled nonrefundable airline tickets before. I suppose Southwest is the most generous (full credit although not a cash refund), but the one I did it on another airline, there was a minimum $100 charge to rebook the same route for each passenger, depending on the cost of the new tickets. The tickets cost $180 RT each. It didn't necessarily make that much sense, but that's what it was.
 
The cheaper the airfare or railfare, and coming soon hotel rooms and car rentals, the tougher the terms for cancellation and refund are or soon will be. If you don't want to take the risk, you have to be willing to pay for it. As long as there is full disclosure of the policies, it's fine. Our indecision is not their problem.
 
PVD said:
The cheaper the airfare or railfare, and coming soon hotel rooms and car rentals, the tougher the terms for cancellation and refund are or soon will be. If you don't want to take the risk, you have to be willing to pay for it. As long as there is full disclosure of the policies, it's fine. Our indecision is not their problem.
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This is sort of true, but for years the travel industry has been able to run profitably with liberal cancellation policies. It is, after all, in the nature of travel that travelers plans change. I'm not sure that its a matter that there are fundamental increases in costs that justify the higher prices and punitive charges, or whether it's a matter of greed on the part of managers and resigned acquiescence on the part of customers, who meekly accept the upcharging. The fact that there are no entrepreneurs out there wiling to start low priced full service travel companies means nothing. It is quite possible that all such entrepreneurs and their financial backers are greedy and have certain expectations of entitlement to earnings that require them to charge high prices for inferior products.
 
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I can't say that I've ever had to pay the refund fee...the vouchers are good enough for me.
 
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bmjhagen9426 said:
At least Amtrak's refund policy is still lenient compared to airlines. From what I know, all airline tickets, except for full-priced ones, are nonrefundable.
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They have varying policies for credit. Southwest is the most generous that I know of where the full credit is applied. A rewards redemption will have all the points redeposited without any specific expiration of those points. Others have varying change fees for cancellation or an attempt to book another flight.
 
Just made reservation with points for April 10-14 departing New Orleans on the Crescent, connecting to Capitol Limited in D.C. and then connecting to California Zephyr to Emeryville for just over 46,000+ points. Roomettes on all trains. AGR customer rep stated refund for cancellation was 10 per cent penalty except if cancelled within last 24 hours before departure it would be 20% penalty. That does not sound like an increase in the refund penalty to 20% on all cancellations.
 
Amtrak just seems to be riding the wave of punitive cancellations like many other travel businesses. We often book lodging and take advantage of the "book it now" lower rates but most of those are now completely without any cancellation privileges On Hotwire and Priceline (for hotels with this policy), you can purchase cancellation insurance for an additional $5 but those policies contain strict conditions. I guess the motivation behind all of this is to take in higher revenue..
 
bmjhagen9426 said:
At least Amtrak's refund policy is still lenient compared to airlines. From what I know, all airline tickets, except for full-priced ones, are nonrefundable.
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Actually there are refundable tickets that are not necessarily "full price" for a specific class of travel. I have used lower priced refundable tickets on occasions. One has to take the time to carefully read the fare rules for each fare class. The less than full price refundable tickets may have other conditions like limits on the time frame within which cancellation must occur, as is the case with Amtrak tickets too.
 
jis said:
bmjhagen9426 said:
At least Amtrak's refund policy is still lenient compared to airlines. From what I know, all airline tickets, except for full-priced ones, are nonrefundable.
Click to expand...
Actually there are refundable tickets that are not necessarily "full price" for a specific class of travel. I have used lower priced refundable tickets on occasions. One has to take the time to carefully read the fare rules for each fare class. The less than full price refundable tickets may have other conditions like limits on the time frame within which cancellation must occur, as is the case with Amtrak tickets too.
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I havent really seen that. One time I was looking for flights and got curious about full fare or near full fare tickets in case I needed to change plans. The near full fare terms were so restrictive that I couldn't figure out why anyone would bother. The leisure fare was about $350 RT, but got up to about $1400 and $1600 for restricted and full fare.

I do recall a time when Southwest was more than just low cost, but low price. The majority of their travel was on their "full fare" which was considerably cheaper than their competitors.
 
Allypet said:
I just booked an AT trip and was told the refund fee is increasing to 20% as of 8/15. Also the last cancelling date has been changed on some trips. As far as I can tell sleeping accommodations are still 15 days, but reserved coach and Acela business class increased to 48 hours, instead of 24. I guess too many people wanted refunds instead of a evoucher.
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I have been reading this since I'm getting ready to book a big trip and I'm still confused by the other paragraph on the refund policy page.

Refund FeeWhere applicable, refund fee is 10% of the total amount refunded, with a minimum amount of $5.00 and a maximum amount of $100.00 per refund transaction. Unless stated otherwise, if a ticket is refundable, the passenger may avoid any refund fee by accepting the full refund value of the ticket as an eVoucher or other exchange credit, good toward future travel within one year.

Is this in addition to the now 20%, or does the minimum/maximum apply to the 20%?

Ex. If my trip in a sleeper costs $1000 and I have to cancel it more than 15 days prior, is it just $100 maximum refund fee, $200 (20%) refund fee or is it some combination of both ($200 + additional fee of $5 - $100)?
 
They are not clear on the website. I would assume the minimum and maximum will go up. But who knows.
 
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