Originally Posted by travelmad478
I'm confused. I travel on Amtrak NE Corridor trains several times a month, using the website to book tickets (I don't mind paying in advance) and calling 1-800-USA-RAIL when I need to change/cancel my tickets--which is almost all the time. Not once in the last eight years of riding Amtrak have I ever been charged a fee for changes or cancellations. What was the policy before? Will my experience change now?
The policy before was exactly what you experienced. No charge to cancel or change your reservation for NE Corridor service. The only exception was if you had accomodations - i.e. a First Class seat on the Acela, or sleeper accomodations on another train. If you failed to cancel those reservations at least 1 hour prior to scheduled departure, you lost the accomodation portion of your fare. As long as it was an hour or more, there was no penalty for that portion either.
Now they are trying to hit you up with a fee for every refund you want. As you know, since the website requires you to pay just to book a reservation (which you need not do if you call Amtrak), there is now a serious disadvantage to booking online. Too bad, because even calling Amtrak Select reservations one deals with a bunch of boneheads.