ByeByeDelta

Tolkiennut has moved to sticky this thread. Any discussion? Hearing no discussion or dissension, motion is carried. Great suggestion.

Moving from hand written paper tickets to computer printed paper tickets was evolutionary. eTicketing is pretty much revolutionary for Amtrak. We're bound to have lots more questions and discussions as eTicketing impacts every passenger and every possible ticketing scenario.

I'm quite certain there will be new scenarios crop up and cause glitches that didn't happen in the limited trial. I'm going to test one this Saturday and see what happens...

"Amtrak will always incorporate random and unpredictable boarding measures throughout the station and no individual will be guaranteed the same boarding experience in order to retain a certain element of randomness to prevent passengers from gaming the boarding system." says Clifford Black, retired Amtrak spokesperson. Passengers interviewed at New York Penn Station this week welcome with the policies, saying the random measures were worth the hassle to protect the traveling public from The Boarding Games.

nerd

Will the switch to e-ticketing make it eventually possible to:

1) Book an AGR ticket online for connecting trains?
2) Book a sleeper award online?
3) Cancel an award ticket online?

AlanB

No. Those things I believe are limited by how AGR interfaces with ARROW; eTicketing has nothing to do with that.

travelmad478

I might buy that if it were not the case that every time in the last 16 years of boarding trains at NYP--except for one lonely exception when there was an Amtrak policeman at the top of the steps--I have gamed the boarding system. By my back-of-the-envelope calculation, that's about 400 successes and 1 failure. Not real random, and pretty predictable!

BeantownFlyer

Hmm, I'm trying to sort through what now appears to be some combined threads. One posts suggests that a ticket purchased last month and set up for pick up (but not yet picked up) suddently becomes an e-ticket. That is not my experience, and I do not believe it is accurate.

I had a somewhat bizzare experience when booking trips for the next few weeks - if I select train 2153 out of RTE, it is only eligible for paper tickets, but if I change the reservation to an earlier or later train it is happy to issue an e-ticket. And if I do that and change back to 2153, it deletes the e-ticket and is back to a paper ticket.

As for the question of why I think there is confusion on e-ticket refund policies, there is this information which seems to suggest an e-ticket is the same as an issued ticket (and thus subject to the only options being refund less 10% or e-voucher for future travel, and not full refund):

eTicket and Prepaid Tickets
eTickets and tickets purchased through other prepaid programs are considered "paid for" and subject to the refund policies of any component rail fare, passenger type discount, and/or promotional discount, even if paper value tickets have not yet been printed

If your travel plans change, you must contact Amtrak to modify your reservation before the train you originally booked has departed.

If you do not do this and do not board your train, your entire reservation will be canceled. If you have already started travel, failure to board any train in your reservation will cause that train and all remaining trains in your reservation to be canceled. Canceled reservations are subject to Amtrak Refund and Exchange policies. The money paid for the trip will be stored in an eVoucher that you may redeem at an Amtrak station ticket office for future travel.


Which takes me to my final rant, which is the absurdity of them issuing an e-voucher that cannot be electronically redeemed. What exactly is electronic about that?!

amamba

Maybe this depends on your individual reservations, as I can easily see in the amtrak app 3 reservations that I made last month and with a QR code for boarding the train. Also, if I log in at amtrak.com on my laptop I am able to email the boarding document/e-ticket to my email address.

This includes one reservation I have for an acela out of RTE.

However, no one has yet addressed my concerns about the RTE tickets. If I have a ticket for boarding RTE in FC and I board in PVD, is there going to be a problem? Will my reservation be cancelled somewhere between PVD and RTE? I hope not.....I guess if I am doing a paper ticket I should be OK still. Since I will be doing an upgrade coupon (hopefully) and since someone mentioned earlier that they thought free upgrades would require paper tickets, hopefully this won't be an issue for me.

tolkiennut

I think someone in the previous thread mentioned on the pilot test, it was a 3 (or 5) hr cutoff window, e.g. as long as your ticket is scanned within 3hrs of your ticket's departure, you are good.

AlanB

Going on information being posted from various sources, here is my best guess on things:

If you look at your existing reservation via the iPhone App, it automatically becomes an eTicket.

If you log into Amtrak's site, pull up your reservation, you can request that they email you the QR code for eTicketing.

If you do nothing and show up at the station, you will be issued a cross between a regular ticket and an eTicket. It will be printed on regular ticket stock, but it will not have all the usual information on the current tickets.

That is odd, can't explain that one at all.

Again, I stress this is my educated guess! If you fail to cancel your eTicket before the train leaves the station then you get the 10% penalty. If you cancel before the train leaves, you can get a full refund; assuming other factors like special reservations that contain other conditions.

To my knowledge it can also be done by phone, you don't have to visit with an agent. At present there is no way however to handle it via online system at Amtrak.com.

AlanB

My understanding of things is that it is not time based. When the conductors finish their sweep of the train collecting/scanning tickets, they hit a button in the App that closes out the batch, as it were, from that station. Once that happens, if you didn't board at your assigned station your reservation is cancelled.

So the question becomes, can the conductors sweep the entire train in between Route 128 & Providence? My best guess is that on a day when the train is running full, they won't complete before PVD. But with a light passenger load, they may well complete before PVD and you could be in trouble.

amamba

Alan, do you know if the same thing would happen if I had a paper ticket, though? I am just basing this question off something someone said earlier in this thread about FC upgrade coupon reservations needing paper tickets.

AlanB

I believe so; but again I'm not 100% sure.

amamba

Maybe I'll just take the 66 to BOS, wait int he CA for an hour, and board there. Means I can't sleep in, but then I am guaranteed my 750 AGR points and won't have any surprises.

BeantownFlyer

Seems like a good guess, but I just tried this on 4 different reservations and where the QR code would be it just says "paper ticket required".

amamba

Did you buy those tickets with a voucher or some other way than just your credit card online?

I only ask that because I have a QR code for some of my reservations, but the one reservation that I bought with a voucher has the same thing where it says "paper ticket required" in the app where the QR code is for my other e-tickets.

tolkiennut

I bought a ticket last week using qwiktrak delivery for travel today... I looked at the reservation on my iPhone, and voila, it is now an e-ticket.

I will try using the phone at NYP today, but have printed the pdf as a backup... will report results.