Still a place to find low bucket?

[njulian]

With the new pricing structure, I'm having a hard time figuring out how to time my purchase. Sinces prices fluctuate wildly now, how do I know (or guess) what the best time would be to purchase my sleeper spot next August?

 

[CHamilton]

Yes. http://amsnag.net/

 

[njulian]

Thanks...kinda amazing that ONE DAY roomette was $125.00 and the rest of the time $343 or $428.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Amsnag does a good job of showing which travel time is best but it still can't show you which purchase time is best. At one time there was a benefit to buying as early as possible but that hasn't be the case for a while now. If there is a new trend as to when discounts are likely to arrive for a given route I don't think anyone has deciphered it yet.

 

[zephyr17]

Only real way to do it is to do amsnag for a series on months and try to suss out the patterns in terms of travel dates and how far out the deals are on a given route, and keep doing that regularly. For me, I ususally travel in "shoulder season" in the fall, and concentrate my research for that. I also don't absolutely have to have the very lowest bucket, but I won't pay for the higher ones either. If I can find a price that will work and that seems reasonable in terms of the overall pattern, I will take it even if I know there is a theoretical lower bucket on the route. My own experience is that the very lowest buckets seem increasingly hard to find.

BTW, August is a peak season. It is likely to initially come into inventory at a high(er) bucket, and drop for at least some dates later. Your best bet, and this is nothing more than an educated guess, would be 6-9 months out. I doubt prices would be dropping after 6 months with the exception of some fire sale of empty rooms from cancellations close to departure.

 

[ciship]

When I look at Amstag, it shows the exact same prices as Amtrak does. I don't understand it's benefit?

 

[Devil's Advocate]

When I look at Amstag, it shows the exact same prices as Amtrak does. I don't understand it's benefit?

The main benefit is that it can look at up to 30 days of prices in a row and then present them in a table that makes finding the cheapest price relatively easy. There are some other tools as well but that's what I use it for.

 

[SarahZ]

When I look at Amstag, it shows the exact same prices as Amtrak does. I don't understand it's benefit?

The main benefit is that it can look at up to 30 days of prices in a row and then present them in a table that makes finding the cheapest price relatively easy. There are some other tools as well but that's what I use it for.

Same here.

Ciship, if it weren't for Amsnag, you'd have to enter lots and lots of dates into Amtrak's site to compare prices and then write those prices down or keep track of them another way. Amsnag allows you to enter a range of dates and does the work for you. You can also set alerts for price changes.

 

[caravanman]

I seem to remember that the amsnag "fare alert" function had become unreliable since amtrak made some alterations to the data stream from their own website... The bug may have been fixed, 'twas some while back.

Amsnag can't do anything for you if you have a specific travel date, as it just relays info from Amtrak.com. Where it is brilliant is if you can go any time but want the cheapest fare over a 30 day period, it lets you see the whole months prices in one go.

Ed

 

[zephyr17]

When I look at Amstag, it shows the exact same prices as Amtrak does. I don't understand it's benefit?

The advantage is to see up to a month worth of prices all at once, filtered by preferred routing if you want. It isn't a discount site, but a research tool. You can always key in 30 queries to the Amtrak site and get the same data if you prefer to do it that way.

The fare alert feature never worked right for me.

 

[chakk]

Amsnag does a good job of showing which travel time is best but it still can't show you which purchase time is best. At one time there was a benefit to buying as early as possible but that hasn't be the case for a while now. If there is a new trend as to when discounts are likely to arrive for a given route I don't think anyone has deciphered it yet.

In theory, it should be do-able to keep track of what amsnag reports for current fares for each day (up to 12 months into the future?) for each route, then analyze how those fares change as the actual travel day approaches. I've seen some websites that do such an analysis for air fares, giving suggestions (which I believe are somewhat better than simple "guesses", since they are based on past experience) on whether fares are likely to go up or down over the next several weeks/months.

 

[zephyr17]

Amsnag does a good job of showing which travel time is best but it still can't show you which purchase time is best. At one time there was a benefit to buying as early as possible but that hasn't be the case for a while now. If there is a new trend as to when discounts are likely to arrive for a given route I don't think anyone has deciphered it yet.

In theory, it should be do-able to keep track of what amsnag reports for current fares for each day (up to 12 months into the future?) for each route, then analyze how those fares change as the actual travel day approaches. I've seen some websites that do such an analysis for air fares, giving suggestions (which I believe are somewhat better than simple "guesses", since they are based on past experience) on whether fares are likely to go up or down over the next several weeks/months.

Yeah, Farecast used to do that and it was pretty good. But Microsoft bought it, incorporated it into Bing Travel, and shut that feature down.

When I feel ambitious, maybe I'll start loading Amsnag info regularly into a spreadsheet for my common routes and see what I come up for patterns.