Amtrak Guest Rewards - Is my ticket forever lost?

Hi there, I recently purchased a ticket w Amtrak from Chicago to NYC round trip for 2 people (value $350). They issued me a ticket which was sent to me via mail. Two days prior to the trip, I modified the reservation by adding a sleeper (using the same booking number) and was sent an e-notification that these new tickets (value $1100) needed to be printed at the station 30 minutes prior to the trip.
I discarded my old tickets since the new ones were using the same booking number and since nowhere in the updated ticket did it say anything about the need for me to bring or keep my old ticket. When arriving at the station, the clerk asks me to hand over my originally purchased tickets. Since these are long gone, I explain to him that these new ones I was about to print, were replacing the old reservation using the same reference number, I assumed this was all I needed. He denied this and made me purchase the whole ticket again.

I later called amtrak customer service to find out how I could redeem my old ticket or the value of them and was told that they had a value and if I threw them out, then they were forever lost.

Due to the fact that there was no information regarding this on my new booking slip or in any other communication, and since they were mixing etickets and mailed tickets, I was extremely confused and frustrated with this system.

Would love to know if anyone can give me advice as to how to get my money back from a ticket never used and a trip paid for twice.

-F

The good news is that there is a process to issue a refund on the tickets that were discarded. The bad news is that Amtrak charges a $75 service fee to do so, and as a security measure they wait five months to process your refund request once they receive it.

You can download a PDF copy of the form that will need to be filled out and sent via postal mail at http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?c=Page&pagename=am%2FLayout&cid=1241267382705 (see the section on Lost, Stolen or Destroyed Tickets).

Still, it appears that the one service fee will probably cover all of the discarded tickets, so you should be looking at a $275 refund after waiting five months, which is better than nothing.

Unfortunately, the only e-Ticket programs in place at the moment are on the Downeaster service between Portland, ME and Boston, and the Auto Train service from Lorton, VA to Sanford, FL. All other Amtrak trains still utilize value-based tickets.

Value-based tickets are basically bearer instruments, similar to cash. Realistically, any person holding the ticket can use it or get a refund on it (even if their name doesn't match, the mismatch is not guaranteed to be caught). That's probably why Amtrak doesn't issue a refund immediately when a passenger reports a ticket as lost--they need to wait several months to see if someone else found and used or refunded the lost tickets. Even though in your particular case you can vouch that the tickets were destroyed, the same policy seems to apply to any ticket that is either lost or stolen or destroyed.

All that said, the materials that came in the mail with the original tickets could have made it clearer that the tickets themselves have value and should be guarded carefully. Hopefully, the e-Ticket program will make this issue a thing of the past once it gets implemented system-wide!

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

If you are departing from a Quik-Trak equipped station, there is no reason to have tickets mailed to you. You can quickly print the tickets on the day of departure, and there is no risk of losing or misplacing valuable tickets. Also, it's usually easier to get a refund on an unprinted ticket than on a printed ticket.