vatraveler

Threatening to call the police? She should be fired.

RogerD408

Not at all. Her supervisor should be for not getting her trained before being put in front of customers. She was just doing what she had been (poorly) trained to do.

I do believe the policy is to call authorities for stow-aways.

ralfp

No problems at EWR. The guy at the gate made some comment about being unfamiliar with the new system, but gave me no problems at all.

I wonder what happens when a conductor tries to check a ticket after passing NYP. IIRC iOS app no longer displays the QR code once the ticket has been scanned.

tolkiennut

Second boarding didn't go as smooth as the first. After the first boarding was so seamless, I didn't bother to print my tix this time, and by the time the conductor got around to scanning, it was 10 minutes past ticket date, and the ticket had "fallen off" the iphone app... Or is there a 7 ticket display limit (because I had 8 under reservation, and this was the first of 8).

So long story short, I had to log into my email, search through to find the reservation, and pull it up that way... not exactly convenient...

And btw, this was on an unreserved keystone... so if the ticket does in fact "fall off" after ticket time, I can't imagine how unreserved riders will cope...

AGR Insider - can you give us any indication if this is a ticket timing issue or an app display issue (with 7 reservation display limitation).

JugglerDave

Well in sort of a reverse-e-ticket problem, the conductor scanned one of my last few *paper* tickets (Keystone PAO -> PHL) and on the scanner a big warning message: "The ticket has not been loaded and may not be valid on this train!!!".

I can't wait for the fun later this week when I start using my first Keystone unreserved e-Tickets in non-sequential segment orders.

tolkiennut

Update:
So I was previously only looking at the main page for my reservations, but I found there is now a "my trips" function on the iPhone app which lists out all reservations, including recent past trips... It appears this is a way around trips "falling off" the main page... you can simply go back and look them up here (e.g. if you are using a keystone unreserved that was purchased for a previous day that is no longer showing on your home screen).

Juggler - I can't wait to hear your experience using out of sequence keystones reservations.

travelmad478

I'm currently on my third ride since the new system came in. All three times, I've used my iPhone to present the bar code. Two times out of three, the conductor's scanner couldn't read it, and they ended up just typing in my reservation number to confirm my details. Not a great showing so far, although I haven't had any trouble proving that I have a ticket. Really though, if all you need is the reservation number, why bother with the bar code at all?

saulblum

Because it's (in theory) faster to scan a code than to read and type in an alphanumeric string.

I used eTicketing for the first time this weekend, and there were no problems scanning my phone all three times. But I did overhear a conductor yesterday mentioning issues scanning phones.

tolkiennut

Any update on Septa honoring the e tix from 30th to Suburban?

ByeByeDelta

I have traveled twice, both times using the PDF on my Android phone. It scanned immediately both times. Saturday, the passengers behind me had an eTicket printed by an agent. The conductor was moving the scanner all around trying to get a good read. Only took 5-6 seconds, but that was still five times slower than my barcode.

travelmad478

Well, I'm now on train #4 and this one scanned OK. So I am batting .500 with the iPhone. I hope the success rate improves!

taxidrivernj

I travel on a monthly through 30th Street, but a Amtrak seat mate who was also going downtown was told by the SEPTA information desk that an e-ticket was acceptable. It turns out that neither of our tickets were checked on the short ride into Center City. In fact, based on my 2-weeks of almost daily riding, I can say tickets are very rarely checked on trains between 30th St and Market East stations.

21A

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.1.1; en-us; Galaxy Nexus Build/JRO03C) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30)

Discovered today that UA code share segments do print as e-tickets. (You can even get the PDF sent to you if you call and ask; I don't have an iPhone so I couldn't try the app route but seems likely that works, too.)

One point to note is that you can only use the lookup by UA flight number the first time; after that, you have to use the Amtrak PNR to reprint.

tolkiennut

I'm still consistently having trouble with the scanner (ironically an iPhone) lifting the barcode from my iPhone using the App... when I use the PDF and blow it up, it works fine.

This is a 4gs phone in question.

I'm about 1 for 8 in getting scans to work on the app... anyone else having trouble?

jackal

I am, at least on my one and only try. Couldn't get it to read a couple of days ago on a Regional EWR-PHL, even with the brightness turned all the way up (iPhone 4). Ultimately, the conductor just typed the code in.

I printed the boarding document out at PHL and used that for my connecting Keystone train.

For today's Pennsylvanian to PGH, I had the conductor scan it off of the PDF on my laptop screen. Absolutely no issue there. Good to know the QR code on the PDF scans on the iPhone screen when blown up, too. (I wonder if a screenshot of the Amtrak iPhone app slightly zoomed in to blow the QR code would work in a pinch, too.)

I discovered something similar today. I had booked a multi-city trip with a couple of unreserved Keystone segments connecting to a reserved Pennsylvanian segment (booked before e-ticketing came online). I ultimately opted to drive to HAR and pick up the train there rather than taking (as I had reserved) a Keystone to HAR and having a 2.5-hour layover to connect to the Pennsylvanian. When I showed up at HAR, the trip didn't display in the iPhone app. I then tried the QT machine, and it said the ticket wasn't available at a kiosk. Fortunately, I had clicked the "Send PDF" button in my reservation the day prior, so I checked with the agent and he said just to show that on my phone and that's all I needed. (I ended up showing it on my computer screen as noted above--figured the matte would read better than the glossy.)

Since I deal with a lot of unreserved Keystone segments (including segments booked on a multi-city reservation that are not all always used the same day), I'll need to be sure to organize the PDFs and keep track of which PDFs I've used and for which segments. It's going to be a bit difficult. Amtrak's reservation system has always made it seem like unreserved segments were something bolted on (the fact they disappeared from the website and couldn't be accessed, changed, or canceled after the "reserved" date of travel), but it was easy to deal with them just by printing the paper ticket and keeping a file of them. Now, the new system makes the whole unreserved thing really apparent and a real mess. It's probably asking too much of Amtrak to rebuild the system to better accommodate unreserved segments, but it would be nice to ensure this is on the long-term roadmap.

Also, is there word on whether the conductor's scanner will lift the correct segment of a multi-city reservation, especially if the cities are in close succession? In other words, does the scanner have a pretty accurate GPS that knows it is 0.5 miles west of the PAO station and to thus lift only the PAO-EXT segment and not the PHL-PAO segment or the EXT-LNC segment?