nerd

I bought a ticket on the Empire Service. Business class is now available, and I'd like to upgrade.

The agent says I can't simply pay the upgrade charge, but I need to cancel and re-book my ticket. This is not good - the fare is now double.

Is the agent correct?

jackal

Theoretically, when you cancel, one seat in your booked fare bucket becomes available again. If you are quick enough, theoretically, you should be able to grab that same fare back.

Of course, I would never want to test that theory.

Assuming business class is available when you board, you can always attempt to pay the upcharge to the conductor, who should only charge you the upcharge and not refare the ticket. Of course, it's hard enough to get conductors to do on-board upgrades to sleepers; I'm not sure how open busy corridor conductors are to bothering to do the tiny upgrade to a nicer seat.

Will have to leave the answer to your core question to those more experienced than I, though...

CMK10

My brother had a coach ticket on the Carolinian over Thanksgiving. At the station he paid $8 to the agent on duty who processed his upgrade into Business Class. I can't see why you couldn't do it this way, is the station you're boarding at staffed?

jackal

Technically, any changes you make before boarding the train are processed at the current fare, although I believe it's possible for the agent to manually fare the ticket. Once you're on-board, the desk that the conductor calls will only charge the upcharge and won't re-fare the ticket.

It's possible the station agent your brother talked to either manually re-fared the ticket, or it could be that the process I described in my previous post worked (it was canceled and then rebooked into the same fare bucket) so the agent didn't have to do anything.

nerd may have more luck going down to an Amtrak station and talking to someone in person, assuming it's not a great hassle to do so. Station agents have a lot of leeway in the system (from what I've seen and understand).

nerd

Business will be sold out by then -- as it frequently is on Empire Service and the Maple Leaf: It's a relatively good value considering it's 2x1 seating, and on top of that, there are only 14 business class seats on each train.

notacolour

The base level fares tend not to sell out for short segments of the Carolinian, so this wouldn't be an issue. Over Thanksgiving the cheapest fare was probably sold out but your brother may have already bought a ticket at a slightly higher fare--and since business class almost never sells out on the Carolinian, this wasn't a problem. As others have noted, though, this is generally not the case on (at least some) other routes.

Just Passing Thru

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