STILL no 2013 Select Package - RIDICULOUS!

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VKurtB

Train Attendant
Joined
Mar 15, 2013
Messages
43
Location
Arab, AL
I am one of the Select passengers who never got their Select package. They said my correct address "wouldn't verify". I called in mid-March, and they said a new package would be going out after I changed my correct address to my business address. Here it is May 20 and I STILL don't have my Select package. This is nuts! They need to fire the contractor handling this. Surveys from Amtrak keep going to my home address and arrive just fine, but no Select package. Sheesh!
 
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VKurtB said:
I am one of the Select passengers who never got their Select package. They said my correct address "wouldn't verify". I called in mid-March, and they said a new package would be going out after I changed my correct address to my business address. Here it is May 20 and I STILL don't have my Select package. This is nuts! They need to fire the contractor handling this. Surveys from Amtrak keep going to my home address and arrive just fine, but no Select package. Sheesh!
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Are you a member of Flyertalk? If not, go over there, register, and head to the Amtrak forum. Post this at FT, and an official AGR participant - AGR Insider - will respond. He will likely ask you to PM him with your specifics, and he has a great track record of making things happen.
 
Just to let all the forum members know - this problem is STILL not rectified. Somebody at Amtrak needs to step up and go around the bureaucracy's inertia. I STILL don't have my 2013 Select package.
 
As suggested, did you contact the AGR Insider on FT? (S)he are the official voices of AGR and the heads of AGR. If there is a problem, they are the ones who can resolve it! Please send them a PM over at Flyer Talk!
 
Ryan said:
I read it on FT.
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Well he posted about the problem on FT, and Insider requested that he send him PM. However, I see nothing that indicates that the OP did indeed send a PM off to Insider. Not saying that he didn't do so, just that there is no confirmation from either side that a PM was sent.
 
True.

I did think it a logical assumption that he would have done so, given the exchange that you cite and the fact that he responded in the thread after (s)he asked him to send her the info.

I can't fathom bumping that thread and this one to complain without taking the time to send the information requested, but I guess it's possible.
 
I PM'ed AGR Insider at FT as requested. She was extraordinarily earnest and has attempted to rectify this, to date to no avail. I believe the fulfillment house handling Select package fulfillment is jerking Amtrak around...., because they can. AGR Insider is now trying again, with the accompanying additional 4 week delay. One does not need to be a legislative researcher, which I am, to recognize crummy contractor work being done for an agency closely tied to government. It is quite the norm, unfortunately. Getting the contract is everything. Delivering a quality service only adds costs.

I believe I MAY get my 2013 kit eventually, right about time for it to expire. This problem did NOT need to happen. Other Amtrak mail reaches me just fine. Trip surveys, for example. Only Select mailings have this infernal problem due to an ill-advised and technically flawed USPS address pre-verification algorithm used by the contractor, who needs to be fired, like NOW.

To be crystal clear, AGR Insider's initial attempt to fix the situation failed and she's back up to bat again.
 
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Sorry, I have the theory that fanboyism needs the occasional cold bright clear light of day shed upon it. Perhaps your mileage varies. I guess some people like Amtrak as a starting point and need to evangelize. If that's your thing, great. Amtrak works for me only insofar as it works. Besides, the banner at the top of my screen says AMTRAK UNLIMITED. Does yours say AMTRAK WORSHIP?
 
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FYI - It's not just AGR, Amtrak or the Government. Last week, I had a package shipped by FedEx. My address is 332 ________ Road, Apt 103. It was delivered fine. THE NEXT DAY, my sister was to receive a package from the SAME company via FedEx. Her address is 332 ______ Road, Apt A. FedEx called and said it could not be delivered - because the address was wrong and they can't locate it! HUH? We live in the same building and they found the building the day before!
 
Good to hear. I listen to and try to help people with all sorts of state government problems every day. Without people willing to speak up when systems fail, nothing could ever improve.
 
"Discussion" covers a lot--good, bad, and ugly. In my months here, I've seen plenty of all three, but more of the good.

I'm glad someone is trying to help the OP. It's interesting that even Insider struck out the first time around, but is still on it.
 
the_traveler said:
FYI - It's not just AGR, Amtrak or the Government. Last week, I had a package shipped by FedEx...
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Unless you've been fighting with FedEx since mid-March I don't see your point.

Ryan said:
Amtrak's doing what they can to fix it.
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How exactly is Amtrak fixing it? By making yet another four-week request?

Ryan said:
You must be under the mistaken impression that we're all a bunch of mindless Amtrak cheerleaders here. You couldn't be farther from the truth.
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It's not that AU is full of cheerleaders so much as we're hyper sensitive toward obvious criticism.
 
Okay, I feel that in exchange for receiving my rant on this issue, readers of this forum are entitled to know what caused this, and why I feel Amtrak or the fulfillment house they used are NOT blameless, although they may think they are in their highly bureaucratic mindset, whichever of them dropped the ball here.

When AGR Insider did a USPS search on my original and still correct home address, three ZIP+4 codes showed up. One is for the main mail slot. There are two others, on for a long defunct second floor business, and one for two former apartments on the third floor. The property was reconfigured as one unified property when we bought it back in 1979. No problems exist getting any other mail. But either Amtrak or its fulfillment house decided that if there were three ZIP+4 codes, AND THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHICH ONE TO USE, THEY WOULD SEND TO NONE!!!! Who in the real world thinks that's a normal thought process?!?!?! I surely don't! There is only one mail slot. All three ZIP+4 codes serve that one slot. All will work just fine. Only two quasi-government semi-private related bureaucracies, Amtrak and the USPS, could POSSIBLY screw up something like this as badly as they have. Amtrak and USPS need to start thinking customer service as not just the BIGGEST thing, but the ONLY thing, and that's not happening, outside of the very wonderful and competent AGR Insider. There shouldn't have to be a "Insider" to fix the rest of Amtrak's bureaucratic screwups.

Hire good competent people and empower them to fix customers' problems. If Amtrak could make that one cultural change, their biggest problem would be beating away all the eager new ridership with a stick because there aren't enough seats.
 
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I love it when people whose livelihood depends on the government rant and rave about how screwed up government is and how much better private industry is.

Doubly so when they impugn a whole group of people based on a single data point (or no data points at all).
 
Ryan said:
I love it when people whose livelihood depends on the government rant and rave about how screwed up government is and how much better private industry is.
Doubly so when they impugn a whole group of people based on a single data point (or no data points at all).
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Maybe the difference is that I'm a completely unprotected "at will" employee (I serve at the pleasure of the Chairman...), and not a union worker with an "it's not my problem" attitude. Everything's my problem in my job. The "poo" flows uphill as well as down. Heck, we even help people whose problem is 100% self-inflicted. It doesn't matter who's at fault; we fix things in legislative offices.
 
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Ryan said:
I love it when people whose livelihood depends on the government rant and rave about how screwed up government is and how much better private industry is.
Doubly so when they impugn a whole group of people based on a single data point (or no data points at all).
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True this for Certain! ;)

(Based on 30 years of Government/Contractor Work @ the Federal and State Levels! These Know Nothings seem to think that Chanting the Mantra that Private Industry is the Answer and the Evil Government is the Problem are waiting for the Black Helicopters to come take them to Secret Government Concentration Camps! :blink:
 
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VKurtB said:
Maybe the difference is that I'm a completely unprotected "at will" employee (I serve at the pleasure of the Chairman...), and not a union worker with an "it's not my problem" attitude. Everything's my problem in my job. The "poo" flows uphill as well as down. Heck, we even help people whose problem is 100% self-inflicted. It doesn't matter who's at fault; we fix things in legislative offices.
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And yet you assume that AGR Insider is a protected union employee, which I can assure you is NOT the case. And you assume that the contract to the fulfillment house was let by a union employee, which again I can assure is NOT the case. And you assume that the fulfillment house, which is a private entity and not a government owned entity is using union workers. I don't know if they do hire union workers or not at the fulfillment house, although even if they do, the odds are that they're only the people producing the kits and not those responsible for dealing with the data sent over from AGR.

Look, I understand your frustration. I know that I would be very upset myself if I were still waiting for my Select Plus kit. But what are the alternatives here? Have AGR Insider fly to where ever this fulfillment house is to personally produce and take to the post office your kit? And at what cost? Or, fire the fulfillment house and inconvenience hundreds, if not more, of AGR members while they hire a replacement and get it up to speed just because your kit didn't show up?

This isn't something where one just snaps one's fingers and makes it work. And while the fulfillment house should undoubtedly be using a better mailing system, again that's not something that one just replaces with a click of a mouse button. Especially since they don't just serve AGR, they have many other customers too, all of whom would experience delays during any swap of mail verification programs. And I rather expect that AGR is probably not one of the house's bigger clients, meaning that they aren't going to go running out to get a new program either just because AGR lodges a complaint.

Frankly at this point probably the best that could be hoped for is that maybe the fulfillment house has some way to take a personal request and enter it into their system overriding the normal procedures or that the house has someway to override/enter a correction into the database for your address.
 
Devil's Advocate said:
Ryan said:
Amtrak's doing what they can to fix it.
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How exactly is Amtrak fixing it? By making yet another four-week request?
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Do you understand the concept that the fulfillment house doesn't just make 1 kit at a time? They're not going to just run down to the production floor and reset the machines to produce 1 AGR kit. Even if that kit is for VKurt who didn't get his kit months ago when he should have due to the fulfillment house's own problem.

We have no idea how AGR Insider processed the request, what steps they took to try to ensure that it does get past the mail verification program, or anything else. All we know is that Insider sent through another request and that the fulfillment house runs off AGR stuff once a month or so. Throw in a week for the USPS to move the envelope when its done and you're at 4 weeks.
 

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