I just had a new one:

I booked a reservation out of SAN on the Amtrak website and then used the new Passbook feature of the Amtrak app to show my e-ticket to the conductor. She scans it and then said that I didn't pay for it. I said, "Huh?" She said, "It's telling me you have a reservation but not a ticket. You can't board with just a reservation, you have to pay for it. I'll let it slide this time but next time you need to pay for it. Normally I would charge you full-fare for another ticket." Of course she said all of this in that infamous tone of voice that is too prevalent among Amtrak employees--especially jarring after having just come back from Japan, where politeness is simply a given. (It wouldn't hurt if some of Amtrak's leadership took a little field trip to Japan, both to see how a railroad can be run to operational perfection and also to learn a little bit about how front-line staff should present themselves.)

In any case, I called Amtrak just to be sure, and the agent confirmed it was ticketed and paid for with my AGR MasterCard. Of course it was, as you can't book an unticketed, held reservation on the Amtrak website, and you also don't get an e-ticket emailed to you or displayed in the Amtrak app unless it's been ticketed (it's an e-ticket barcode, fergoshsakes, although interestingly, the emailed PDFs don't contain ticket numbers anymore).

I was going to tell her I confirmed this to save face, but I think I won't look a gift horse in the mouth and will just refund (er, get a useless eVoucher for) this ticket after I get off. If I'm going to be treated this way by an employee for a glitch in their system and also lose the points (since the ticket wasn't lifted), $34.20 to use on another trip is adequate compensation.

Also, the cafe car's credit card machine is broken.

On the plus side, I'd forgotten how smooth and quiet the bilevel cars are compared to the Amfleets.