by Jersey_Mike
I am actually out in the field this week and I just had a run in with the oncoming Hurricane Sandy. I am scheduled on Sunday's northbound Train 20, which will now be terminated at Washington, DC to avoid having the trainset stranded north of any potential Hurricane damage on Monday. I got the call from Amtrak, but because I was traveling to Baltimore they explained only that my train had been cancelled (not truncated) and I should call the rebooking desk.
Well checking out Amtrak.com I saw that the change was only an early termination, not a cancellation, however because we are now using E-Ticketing, not regular ticketing I had to call Amtrak and stay on hold for 35 minutes just to change my ticket to the new terminal. I could not make this change myself because that would have resulted in a much higher ticket price, nor could I use my original E-ticket because he had been cancelled. I eventually got the situation dealt with, but for a system that has been promised to increase customer convenience it has done nothing but the opposite.
At the very least Amtrak needs to preemptively re-book passengers as soon as trains are cancelled or annulled. If a train is annulled, at the very least allow the existing reservations to remain valid through the portion of the trip that is still running so that if a passenger is unable to get the word they at least get part way to their destination. In this case I should have been automatically put on a Regional as it is clearly the best option available. Furthermore Amtrak should allow passengers who have had reservations impacted by these types of events to rebook online without penalty between their original city pairs with in some time period of the original reservation. This will prevent the mad scramble to speak with a human agent.
Well checking out Amtrak.com I saw that the change was only an early termination, not a cancellation, however because we are now using E-Ticketing, not regular ticketing I had to call Amtrak and stay on hold for 35 minutes just to change my ticket to the new terminal. I could not make this change myself because that would have resulted in a much higher ticket price, nor could I use my original E-ticket because he had been cancelled. I eventually got the situation dealt with, but for a system that has been promised to increase customer convenience it has done nothing but the opposite.
At the very least Amtrak needs to preemptively re-book passengers as soon as trains are cancelled or annulled. If a train is annulled, at the very least allow the existing reservations to remain valid through the portion of the trip that is still running so that if a passenger is unable to get the word they at least get part way to their destination. In this case I should have been automatically put on a Regional as it is clearly the best option available. Furthermore Amtrak should allow passengers who have had reservations impacted by these types of events to rebook online without penalty between their original city pairs with in some time period of the original reservation. This will prevent the mad scramble to speak with a human agent.