Soooooo, in your "perfect world of an internet fan board", you would allow no dissent or would flag anyone who disagrees with your thoughts of "how great it is to ride Amtrak"? (I'm generalizing here GML, I have not gone back and read all of your posts)
In my perfect world of an internet fan board, the board members would hail me as an almighty god, and bake me cookies sending them to me via FedEx. But we are harping on my fantasies of world domination.
Being serious, not at all, dude. You are not the board troll, nor would I consider calling you that. You have negative opinions that I disagree with (and so inform you at times) but I don't see you as a troll. Being blunt, I think you whine more than is good for you, but you aren't the type of person I was targeting with my post.
You get cynical with age- because you have experience. Most 15 year olds are not qualified to be cynical. You have clearly ridden Amtrak a great deal, and thus I can see your opinion as... expecting idealism, perhaps, but justified.
But to take a recent guest, that Bordeaux kvetsch, who has ridden precisely one round trip, and uses this to not only fully justify killing Amtrak in its entirety, but to compare it to the slaughter of 14 million innocent people. Puh-lease.
The biggest disservice we can do is to dissuade members and guest from posting their real-life experiences, even if they are just "venting", offer nothing positive, and are wildly off-base.
Don't like it? Don't read it, or scan thru it. I tire of it too.
The biggest disservice we can do is to sit and read the kind of clap-trap nonsense put forth by a crank like Mr. Bordeaux and let it pass as something approaching rationality and reason, so that people read it and decide that riding Amtrak really something bad enough to justify comparing to riding an Auschwitz Express. It isn't. It is not all it can be, certainly, but can you possibly justify the comparison?
However, reading the litany of "less-than-stellar" experiences has really incensed me. It made me realize that I have been an AmPologist for years, and I didn't like that realization.
I called Customer Service, I sent emails, I wrote letters, and I confronted bad service, and tipped and complimented good service.
I have never seen you as one. Its just, one day you seemed to suddenly start believing some of the bughouse nonsense that certain angry and dissatisfied ranters, who, if not trolls, were at the very least somewhat irrational with anger at their (unusual) bad experience.
But something is broken at Amtrak, (well, a LOT of things are broken)and other companies (Southwest Airlines as an example) have proved that employees, and their attitude, can have a real POSITIVE impact on the way the traveling public perceives that company.
It is unreasonable to take the standard of the industry in customer satisfaction, then point at Amtrak and claim that since they don't meet the benchmark, they are broken. Certainly, service at Amtrak can always use improvement. But Amtrak's service is far superior to the fustercluck that is flying with most of our legacy carriers and many of our budget ones.
"It takes two to Tango", so if you don't like what some posters, or as you describe "Trolls", post, ignore it.
In case you haven't noticed, I like fighting.
