I think the question is more about getting on late, not getting off early. If you get on 20 minutes after your trip is scheduled to start, and don't get your ticket scanned until then, there is some risk of your ticket getting cancelled--but I think this is a low risk. I've only taken two round trips since e-tickets came in, but both returns involved travel out of NYP, where it typically takes at least 20-30 minutes for the conductors to scan everyone's ticket. I had no issues. If the ticket gets cancelled as a no-show, you can give your reservation number and show the printout of your e-ticket--I can't believe you'd get thrown off the train.

So far on this thread no one has reported actual problems resulting from this issue.

There will be some bugs to work out of the system, but I would guess you will be fine with hopping on board a stop or two later. There have been times where I've been 2.5 hours into a 3 hour trip before the conductor made it to my car to lift tickets!

I'll bet the app has a means to override if an exception is presented. More of a concern is if your next segment or remainder of your ticket gets canceled! Another reason to break tickets up into one-ways when not cost restricted.

Ah, misread the OP.

I rode a NER from MET to PHL and didn't get my ticket scanned until after TRE. I doubt it'd be a problem.

This is a serious concern of mine. I also mostly travel PVD - NYP (or PVD - PHL) but always book to a boston station to get the bonus points for select city pairs.

I just traveled last weekend and actually hauled myself up to BOS on the 66 and then took the 2159 (9:15 AM) acela south to NYP because I was nervous about having a cancelled ticket.

I asked the conductor when I was on board and he did say it was possible that the ticket would be cancelled between RTE and PVD.

Now, on my trip north, I booked to RTE and just got off in PVD. Not a problem. Interestingly enough, however, I was in the FC on the 2252 yesterday. 1st conductor comes through and scans all of the tickets right out of NYP. However, after Stamford, a second conductor comes through and starts scanning. The FC attendant said that we had all already been scanned, but then he scans my ticket and said it hadn't been processed yet. So I don't really know what the deal is, because my ticket scanned successfully when we were north of Stamford on the way home.

In any case, if you are riding in the FC car or on a train that regularly sells out, I personally am not yet willing to risk an auto cancellation for points by booking to RTE and then boarding in PVD. But with amtrak, YMMV.

I would love to hear of anyone who has successfully booked a ticket starting in RTE and then boarded at PVD since e-ticketing was implemented.

In my experience conductors do not seem to care if you get off early, they seem to care if you get on later than you are ticketed for.

A few times I have gotten off at NWK or MET instead of NYP and each time the conductor has always said it is not an issue.

Dan

Well, I'm traveling on Acela business class, so I don't have the accommodation upgrade issue to deal with.

I went ahead and purchased the ticket from RTE rather than PVD...I'm traveling on Wednesday so I will update everyone with my success/failure. I figure the worst that happens is that if the ticket gets cancelled as a no-show I immediately buy a new one on my iPhone, but I am with the majority and doubt that will be the case.

The trip I had referenced above was postponed until today; however, I had no issues using my ticket that was issued RTE->NYP when boarding in PVD. The conductor's scanner beeped happily, and the only thing the conductor said was "thank you."

Thanks for the update.

E-Ticket issued for reservation made in April
 

I have an AGR sleeper award reservation booked in April for this November 8, SAC-SEA. I had not retrieved the ticket yet from Quiktrak.

Recently, I received an email containing the E-Ticket for this trip.

So, I guess they are catching up on old reservations for future travel.

That make sense. The refund policy has changed regardless of when you purchased. :(

Well, my friend missed the Sunset Limited at LA Union Station because he left his jacket somewhere, so I drove him to Pomona and boarded it there. Ticket scanned and he was given the seat check with no problems. Ironically the train left LAUS about 20 minutes late for some unknown reason, so we could have made it there.

Recently had a conflict come up and couldn't make 2 of my reservations. One had already passed, but another was for later in the day.

The upcoming one was easily changed, and I was able to call and do an equal swap, no charge.

The past reservation I had to call Amtrak about and it took a 20 minute hold followed by another 20 minute hold to get a refund process kicked off...

Interesting to note, they said they had my ticket in the system as "lifted" and that the conductor can do a "lift all" regardless of if you present the ticket or not... this caused all kinds of problems and exceptions in processing the refund... made me long for the days of paper.

Also, neither of my 2 new tickets are showing on the iPhone app, although I have the email tickets showing they are linked to my AGR# and profile... not sure if it had to do with being called in? Anyone else missing tickets on the app?

So it's been two full months. My biggest frustration is that I have no way of knowing how many segments I have used on any given e-Ticket (I put 4 unreserved one-ways on each barcode). There have been at least two instances where the conductor scanned the barcode presented, yet my points have posted listing an entirely different reservation number! Once the start date of the ticket has passed, there seems to be no way to bring up the reservation on "My Trips" either.

That "Lift All" option is very interesting. One claim for e-ticketing was that Amtrak would have an accurate manifest of passengers on the train (an Amtrak failing noted by the NTSB in several investigations). If conductors can simply tap a button and have all reservations marked as on board, regardless of whether they are or not, that would seem to degrade the accuracy of the system to say who is actually on the train.

Yes, I find that worrisome too. I hope there is some record that the "Lift All" button was used. I would hate to have a ticket showing as used if it wasn't. I buy unreserved tickets in advance and use them during the year. If the conductor should happen to use that button on my originally ticketed train I could be left trying to use a "used" ticket on a latter train. If they know the "Lift All" was used, then there would be reason to doubt.

I called one time (in band camp) about a missing trip and commented they had my return trip dated before I made my outbound journey. The agents were quite confused until a supervisor pointed out the LD trains record all tickets as of the origin of the train and not your travels. So an overnight to Reno on the CZ returns two days before you depart. :)

I don't believe that's something that a conductor can do; lift all.

That's a management tool I think.

I was talking with my local station agents about eTickets a few days ago. Their main gripe is that some tickets are being automatically lifted instead of canceled after train departure. They've had several passengers come in with "unused" tickets that are marked as lifted. This requires a phone call to have the ticket lift reversed to free the value for an exchange.

Don't know if this has anything to do with the nuclear "Lift All" option by conductors or a broader system function operating contrary to published policy. The agents seemed to indicate it was an automatic system function.

My Father's LIRR train had a mechanical issues which delayed his arrival into PENN causing him to miss his ACELA to BOS.

He went to CLUB Acela where the agent first tried to exchange his ticket, but that failed as it had already been lifted, which the agent said is happening a lot and she was unsure as to why.

She then had to call on the phone to some sort of support desk which "un-lifted" the ticket and then she was able to put him on a later departure.

All in all, if tickets can be lifted without being scanned, there is a flaw in the system.

Dan

I'm taking New Haven to Boston on Acela. I was thinking about booking Stamford to Boston in order to qualify for the Acela 500 points city pairs (and x2 due to the promotion). With the new e-ticketing system, I'm thinking that it may be too risky since it's a 40 minute ride between Stamford and New Haven and I don't want my reservation to get cancelled. Any thoughts?

An article about e-ticketing in this month's Trains magazine says that Amtrak is now allowing two hours between departure from the ticketed station and the scan before the reservation is cancelled. The reason stated was to permit boarding at a station down the line. It is not confirmed (as in someone trying), but it sounds like this problem may be solved.

I recently redeemed some of my AGR points for travel by a family member. While the eTicket has my family member's name on it, it lists my AGR number. Until now, I hadn't redeemed an award for travel by someone other than myself. Is this mismatch an idiosyncracy of eTicketing, or has this always been the case?

If you booked a ticket for yourself, then your number always appeared on the ticket. Booking for someone else, no I don't 'believe that your number would have appeared.

Someone on this board has confirmed that they boarded in PVD with a ticket for RTE.

I also confirmed boarding in POS for a train originating at LAX, a few weeks ago. So it is possible.

Missing QR codes on iPhone app!
 

I might need to start a new thread for this one, but will try here. I've got 5 bookings over the next three days (three AGR, two paid). All of them are showing up in the "My Trips" section of the Amtrak iPhone app, but when I go to view them, all five are missing the QR code! I do have the e-mailed reservations for all of them, and the QR codes are included there.

I have gotten very used to using the app as my ticket when the conductors come by, and it has been working great until now. Anyone else seeing this?

The conductors don't have a nuclear lift all option. The only lift all occurs if there is a system outage and the conductors can't scan. That is initiated by management. In most cases tickets are showing lifted without being scanned because......they were not scanned. If you miss the train and don't call after a certain amount of time it will be considered a no show. Or the passenger was on the train and it was not scanned it will be a no show. And if you had a return or another leg on the reservation that will be canceled too because the passenger becomes a no show.

iPhone E-Ticket
 

My iPhone app used to show all upcoming trips in the bottom of the main page... now it simply says "no active trips," but when i click on no active trips, it takes me to the "my trips" page which lists the 6 active trips i have upcoming... huh? It's been this way for a couple of weeks now and I've logged out, logged back in, and reinstalled... no luck

Mine does the same thing. I figure it's just a glitch in the app. As long as the trips are in there somewhere, I guess it's OK.

My missing QR codes mysteriously reappeared 24 hours after I noticed that they were AWOL. Another glitch? Who knows.

I think some brainiac decided to display only the active trip - i.e. when you are actually on the train - on the home page

It's quite annoying and counter-intuitive

Club Acela agent told me that they were going to try to change the cancelation of etickets from when you were supposed to have boarded to when you were supposed to have gotten off...that would make it possible to buy a NYP-WAS ticket and board in BAL or BWI. Not that you would want to do it...

I believe they changed the configuration of the Bar Code scan within the App and so far, it seems to be scanning better...

iPhone Trips at the bottom of the home screen is still broken - also the "my trips" tab shows outdated dates for tickets that have been modified...

Well, 3 months in and I am still having major issues with Unreserved Keystone trains... many times my ticket (with 4 segments) is not "loaded" into the scanner. That's fine... but typically the conductor is doing a search on my name and selecting a segment from a reservation/ticket DIFFERENT than the one physically presented, often without telling me.

The result is that I have to meticulously keep track of each ticket, which segments were scanned, and which were not, and keep requesting that the conductor look up based on the reservation number rather than my name. I'm pretty sure I've "lost" a few segments this way.

Me, too. See the post I just made in another thread here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/19614040-post23.html

I've been doing the same as you: having the conductor look up by reservation number.

Cancellation of ETix
 

Anyone else having lots of trouble reaching a refund agent?

I had a ticket which I missed the train, it was "auto lifted," so I couldn't cancel online, called in and spoke with a reservation agent two months ago, they said it would take several weeks, still no refund, called earlier and sat on hold for 30 minutes and then pressed 1 to leave a message... 8 hours later, still no call back, so I call back, get a rude agent who tells me they are busy, and have been on hold for over 30 minutes again...

Time to call the BBB about anti-consumer refund practices?

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. :rolleyes:

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

I'd call and ask the agent for a transfer to Customer service, let them deal with it. Not a regular agent.

I'm not even sure if Amtrak bothers to participate in the BBB, so there is probably very little that the BBB can do. Even if Amtrak participated, the BBB is still very limited in what they can do.

Interestingly, if you run the barcode through a decoder app all it contains is your reservation number and (first?) date of travel. So either Amtrak has gone truly ticketless on their back-end system, or the ticket numbers are strictly used internally.

Out of curiosity, how much time passed between when you purchased the ticket and when it was scanned? My initial suspicion is that the conductor's hand-held scanner was out-of-sync with the live database and wasn't able to connect via a mobile (cell phone) data network. Of course, they should really have a formal procedure for this sort of circumstance...

I'd be shocked if that were the case; it would require a MUCH more extensive overhaul of ARROW than I think would have been possible.

Booked on 11/9 for travel 11/19.

I don't think the conductors' phones maintain any sort of offline database. I've had them try to look things up in dead zones and they usually just give up or say they'll come back later. If they did have an offline copy of all outstanding reservations, the database would be HUGE.

I tend to agree; having been on the airline side of the coin I can't imagine doing this without a complete cutover to a new CRS. But stranger things have happened.

Based on your experience, it looks like there is no caching at all, but it would be entirely feasible to maintain a "manifest" subset of the database on the handheld device, at least for all-reserved trains. It would have been relatively straightforward to set up a scheme where the reservations info of everyone expected on the train is stored locally on the device and is synced anytime it is within wireless coverage. Yes, it would still be possible for the device to not have the most up-to-date information, but if the bulk of the manifest data was loaded before departure, adding new passengers and removing cancelled passengers to the device's cached database wouldn't take up too much bandwidth and would keep it current in all but the largest dead zones.

But of course, this wouldn't be feasible for unreserved trains; as you state, the size of the database of all outstanding tickets, even just for non-reserved trains, would indeed be huge.

You may be right. I've only had experience with weird issues on unreserved trains (Keystone and Surfliner). On the Keystone, I'm usually using tickets for vastly different dates than I've purchased them for, which would understandably make it hard for them to look up my information in an area of bad coverage.

No idea what happened with the Surfliner trip yesterday--I was traveling on the exact train I had chosen during the booking process. (In fact, I showed up at the Santa Fe depot early enough to take the next earlier train, but when I saw it was using the single-level Horizon/Amfleet equipment, I went across the street to Starbucks and worked for an hour and a half until my originally-booked train, which (fortunately) had the bi-level Surfliner cars in its consist.

As an aside, I picked a rear-facing seat in one of the Surfliner cars, figuring that the lone Superliner car in the consist would not be outfitted with wifi and power. I walked through the Superliner car later and was shocked to discover that not only did it have a strong wifi signal, it also had two power outlets per seat, compared to the single outlet per seat in the Surfliner cars! Lesson learned for next time. :)