Does Amtrak ever overbook sleepers?

I was just wondering if I just got lucky, or if the booking computer system is not too reliable. I was checking the Amtrak web site today for available sleeper space on #48 for 8/27/04. I tried to get a deluxe room and found they were sold out. OK, I was going to call when ready to make the actual reservations anyway. The agent said there was indeed 1 deluxe bedroom for that trip, which I booked. (I then went back to the web site and now the deluxe option was not even listed, which put a big smile on my face!)

I was just wondering if anyone ever heard of the computer assigning more rooms than the train actually carried? Which, by the way, would be how many typically on the LSL?

TT

Amtrak never intentionally overbooks sleepers. And the reservations system doesn't even provide that as an option for the capacity managers. Only a computer 'glitch' would create that situation.

Overbooking coach passengers is slightly less risky, and the average rate of "no-shows" for a particular train/date is used to determine how many over-bookings to allow. In a worst-case scenario where everyone booked shows up for the train you get standees, or folks have to take seats in the lounge car.

Now if you were to allow two parties to book into the same sleeper (and they both show up) you're talking about an involuntary downgrade in service and some really irrate customers who expected comp meals, beds and privacy for the night!

It's hard to overbook a sleeper, since rooms are assigned as soon as you make the reservation. You'd have to determine which room(s) to sell twice, and hope that both ticketholders don't show up.

ISTR an instance on my Coast Starlight trip in January (I was in coach) where attendants were discussing a problem where two separate reservations were booked for the same room. I assume it was resolved somehow.

As for your situation about going online and not seeing a room, but one being available when you called, I suppose it is possible that someone had made a reservation for that room and then cancelled as soon as you called. There are other weird possibilities as well, that I don't know enough about to be able to describe.

On a tangential note, last summer I was booking a room on the Empire Builder, Milwaukee-Seattle. The website showed a standard available, but when I tried to book it, I kept getting an error message. I then called the reservation number, and the agents said that no rooms were available (IIRC). I posted the problem to another online forum, where some very knowledgeable people frequently post, and one or two of them suggested that the problem could have been in that rooms were available for the trip, but no single room was open from Milwaukee to Seattle, and that one would have to try and book a trip changing rooms at the midpoint.

I went to the station in Milwaukee to book, and the agent there said that there was a room available the whole way, so the whole discussion was moot anyway. Perhaps one had been cancelled in between the time I checked online/on the phone, and when I went to the station.

Occasionally there are instances where a train with multiple sleepers is short one on very short notice due to bad order and no spare, but Amtrak does not intentionally overbook.

That leads to a question on the contract of carriage...

Pre-1971, the investor-owned railroads had an obligation to both transportation and level of service.

Now, in both the public timetables and in the terms of service, the railroad had the right to substitute equipment and specified accommodation, but the maximum fee paid was what one had already laid upon the counter. That was in part because generally, an eqipment substitution in First Class meant an older, section based, sleeper.

The railroads also had enough protection cars to cover any conceivable set of emergencies on their routes ... including a new trainset if there was a catastrophic set (City of San Francisco, Harney, NV, 1939).

So, to the questions:
- Does the contract of carriage guarantee accommodation?
- What does Amtrak do when they do have to bump paid for First Class travellers out of accommodations?

John

John_Perkowski wrote:So, to the questions:
- Does the contract of carriage guarantee accommodation?

No.

- What does Amtrak do when they do have to bump paid for First Class travellers out of accommodations?

"Here's your coach ticket, here's your accommodation charge refund, sorry for the inconvenience, have a nice day."

Depending on the situation, the passenger can request to be rebooked on a future trip (i.e. the next day), if the accommodation is available, but that passenger would be responsible for any expenses incurred in the mean time (i.e. hotel). If there are multiple routing options (such as Chicago-East Coast), they can see if an alternate train has space available.

Last January (2003) I was booked on a sleeper from Boston to Chicago on the Lake Shore Limited, but the sleeper had been blanked from that train for pretty much the entire week or so (I rode an eastbound train in coach a couple of days earlier, and it had no Boston sleeper). When I got to the "clubacela" in Boston, they told me the sleeper was gone, gave me a coach ticket, and refunded my money. Needless to say, I was unhappy (that would have been my first and thus far only trip in a Viewliner).

I did convince the dining car staff to give me the complimentary meals, and still made use of the Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago, in addition to receiving a $50 voucher afterwards.

I should further mention that on my recent Texas Eagle trip, where the Sunset misconnect forced us to ride a bus from San Antonio to Dallas, I got a refund for the SAS-DAL portion of the accommodation charge, which amounted to $42. However, I only knew this because of another online forum where I was told about that possibility ahead of time. Nobody on the train/bus was told that they could get a partial refund of their sleeper ticket, though we were informed that we could get our lunch refunded (we stopped at a fast-food area halfway through the bus) by handing our receipts in when we got to our destination.

In Chicago, I had to convince the customer service staff that I was eligible for a refund, because nothing was in the computer that indicated we were bussed, and I "should have" had the conductor sign the ticket stub indicating that I was eligible for a refund (of course, nobody said anything about that on the train).

Couple of comments:

1) One reason that airlines traditionally allowed "double-booking" was under the earliest versions of SABRE (don't know currently) two different agents could sell the same seat at once. In order to make the system as efficient as possible, records in the DB weren't locked, etc. (remember, this was the day of the mainframe and dial-up 300 (if you were lucky) connections.

Of course unless a flight was 100% at capacity, it wasn't a huge problem. You'd get moved to another seat and pretty much, on a plane, a seat is a seat.

And of course, they had enough metrics to know that routinely X% of people would fail to show for the flight and so even if they booked over 100% of the flight, it was quite likely that less than 100% of the people would show up. Which further made the problem of double-booking a particular seat less of an issue.

To a point, this would be workable on trains and in fact is. Any "non-reservation" train basically assumes the seats are a commodity and people will fill them and not care too much which particular seat they are in.

Obviously for sleepers, they can't be marketed as commodities, there simply aren't enough of them on any particular route at this time.

2) What does Amtrak do. Only case I'm familiar with was a LSL trip where the Boston section sleeper was cancelled. In that case the people on it were offered a coach seat and some amount of money towards future travel. Of the folks I had dinner with, one was a bit bummed for lack of a better word, but figured he could survive a night in coach and was going to get a future free ride out of it so wasn't too upset. The one woman at the table was fuming. Understandably so, but unfortunately, I think 5+ hours after learning of her fate she could have been a bit more polite to the dining crew who had nothing to do with her original issue. (note, I think they still got their meals for free in any event.)

(Btw, this goes back to another post... Many say the crew on the LSL is often rude. I'd say in this case the dining crew at least did a remarkable job of dealing with at least one (and probably several) unhappy customers. Dinner for me was pleasant and the crew professional. Ok, I was called a foamer by the sleeping car attendant, but that was in a good natured way. :-)

Many say the crew on the LSL is often rude.

"Many say"? "Often"? A certain 6-letter word comes to mind . . .

nitpic ?

"gossip"

And no, it's not "nitpicking" to point it gossip where it occurs. Call it a public service--because people who engage in gossip eventually get branded as gossips. I don't think anyone here wants that label.

Don't overlook onboard sales of unreserved rooms. Conductor is working from the latest printed manifest in his possession and can sell open space. Last minute sales by stations ahead on the route that happen before his sale gets updated into the computer system at a later stop will result in double booking.

Conductors are required to limit their on-board sales only to those unsold rooms that can be secured by first telephoning the reservations desk or the inventory managers in Operations. Additionally, when demand is particularly low, a specific portion of the unsold sleeper inventory is 'set aside' in advance in the reservations system and earmarked for conductor sales. Those rooms so demarked are readily identifiable on the conductor's printed manifest. And station agents aren't allowed to sell them - they must offer the other unsold rooms only.

A variation on the theme:

On the Lake Shore Limited about a year ago, I shared a table in the dining car with an elderly woman and her two adult children. Thanks to either a sloppy reservations agent or a computer glitch, all three had been booked into a single standard room.

Sleeper-wise, the train was sold out. The woman and her 40-something daughter took the room. The 40-something son had to camp out in coach.

Nobody was smiling. It was the first time they'd ever traveled by train.

Hardly Mr Fels. If you'll recall, there were been numerous comments on the old forum from folks who complained about the rudeness on the LSL.

As we don't have access to those forums any more I can't point you to specific posts. But I can assure you they were there.

I don't appreciate the insinuation that I'm spreading gossip when I'm simply making an observation based on others comments.

My point remains, despite others claiming problems, I have not seen them myself.

Old forums?

Try this link. Some luck may come of it...