E-tickets are here!
 

Sometime between 9:02 AM EDT today (when I booked an Amtrak ticket WIL-NYP) and 9:37 AM (when my colleague booked hers), Amtrak's website added a new ticket delivery option: "eTicket sent to e-mail." This is now the default option, with "At station from Quik-Trak" and "At station from ticket agent" also available but not the default choice. My colleague now has a PDF file with a QR code that she is to print out and present as her ticket--just like an airline e-ticket. Even though you now have a paper ticket in hand, changes are still possible if you call, apparently--I presume that the conductor will see the updated itinerary upon scanning the QR code even if you get on a different train than the one your printout says.

Correct, any changes to your itinerary made in person or by phone will be reflected on the conductor's iPhone, unless maybe you made the change 2 minutes before boarding and the train was in an area with no cellular data to allow the conductor's phone to know about the changes.

You'll also only get one QR code per reservation, without regard to how many segments your reservation may have nor how many people are on said reservation.

And if you now try to board an earlier train than the one you're supposed to be on, the conductor's iPhone will inform him that you are on the wrong train. I'm not sure what, if any, latitude the conductor has to override things and allow you to remain on the train.

I just booked online and didnt see any option - probably just clicking too fast - so I was shocked when the screen said I would get an e-ticket.

The e-mail came, and when i logged into the iPhone app and pulled up the reservation, there was the QR code, meaning I dont need the e-ticket printout at all; the iPhone does it all.

This is going to be madness in the first class car with no tickets for the staff to check...

E-tickets are here!
 

Looks like I'll have to wait till sometime this Fall before I'll no longer have to get paper tickets for my most frequent itineraries, involving Thruway buses to/from San Francisco. Only a handful of CA Thruway routes are eTicketing-enabled as of today.

Does anyone know what the impact of e-ticketing might be for boarding a train late? I am specifically thinking of those who book tickets from RTE/BBY/BOS and board in PVD on the acela for the select city pair points (500 BC, 750 FC).

I don't want to get on the train in PVD and find out my tickets have been cancelled.

A few comments - looks like it is available for trips starting Wednesday (8/1), as it was not an option for my trip tomorrow. That means for my return on Wednesday I get to experience this on the first day - should be interesting.

The refund policies are very confusing. When I look online it appears that if I cancel the e-ticket reservation now I will get a full refund for the ticket (including the accomodation charges) to my American Express. This is not consistent with the information on the website which seems to say that once an e-ticket is issued you can only get a refund to a e-voucher, or a refund to your credit card less the 10% penalty.

It would be nice if the practice matched the explanation (or better yet, the explanation is revised to match what appears to be the practice). That takes me to the absurbdity of the e-vocuher which cannot be electronically redeemed and you must go to the ticket counter to use it.

I did note that it says if you dont board a train you reservation will be cancelled. I cant imagine they would do that on a Boston departure before the train reaches Providence. There are plenty of occassions where my ticket is never checked until well beyond Providence.

About a minute ago I got the announcement e-mail from Amtrak:

LOL - how funny!

I just booked my first Acela ticket this morning, for travel on Wednesday.

Got the eTicket link, and printed it out. Very convenient! Didn't think it was anything new, just SOP.

Very cool - looking forward to my first Acela First Class ride... Have a meeting in Boston on Wednesday, so I'm doing a turn-n-burn NYP-RTE, and I'd much rather do it via train than driving (or flying!)

Alan,
How does that work for an unreserved train, such as Keystones between Harrisburg and Philadelphia? I regularly buy a ticket for the last train of the day because I don't always know which train I will take. At least up until now, I could pick up the ticket at the QuikTrak and use it on any Keystone I wanted for that day (a trick I learned on FlyerTalk!).

Will the E-tickets effectively make the unreserved trains reserved?

Cool. Thanks, nerd!

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Are tickets purchased before the changeover (but not printed yet) able to be printed as e-tickets now, or do they still need to be printed as conventional tickets?

eTicket on Acela
 

The CA agent and I did a double take when the ticket came out this morning for my trip. I"m a weekly NYP -> WAS round tripper and the differences in the layout of the ticket itself are quite visible most importantly the "RETAIN DURING TRIP" prominently featured. I'm on the 6am so traffic is light but it def slowed the conductor down. I'm on 2126 which is more crowded on the way home tomorrow so I'll be curious to see how that goes. This may have already been asked in one of the other threads on the toic so I apologize but: If i have an eticket and I process an upgrade can I proceded directly to first class or does the bar code change?

As long as it does not include a bus segment (most are not set-up for scanning), you can get an e-ticket. If you open your reservation on Amtrak.com (assuming you made it on-line), there should be an option to send an e-ticket PDF.

rdorman,

The bar code does not change, not matter what changes you make. The only way to get a different bar code is to cancel outright and start over.

The one thing that I'm not sure of, although presumably the CA agent can also scan the QR Code, is how the agent will know you did an upgrade and to grant you access to the lounge, since the paperwork would still say BC on it. Even if they can't scan the QR code, they should still be able to look up the reservation, but that is of course more work for them which some may not like.

It's also going to be an interesting exercise for the FC crew in the car, as many like to check to make sure that you actually belong in that car and they will have no way to know that you processed an upgrade. Only the conductor will know that; so I would not be surprised to see a slight increase in people being kicked out of FC because they have the wrong ticket as it were.

Yes - purchased a ticket last month for travel next month and, when I go to the itinerary on the Amtrak iPhone app, the e-ticket is right there.

Well I have a bunch of paper tickets to go through but then I will try the great unreserved Keystone Experiment.
I usually purchase (via 'multi city') PHL-PAO/PAO-PHL/PHL-PAO/PAO-PHL, with one of the return trips being 'peak' for Friday afternoon travel.

In theory there are 4 segments on one barcode which may be used in any order.

So my various experiements in the next few weeks will be:
1- use the two "phl-pao, phl-pao" segments before using the pao-phl segments
2 - use a pao-phl segment first, even if the first segment on the res is phl-pao
3 - ensure that the "peak" pao-phl doesn't get used on a non peak train, on a barcode that has another off-peak pao-phl available.

Expect to have problems with at least some that!

Had a friend just last week, before eTicketing came out that already had issues with something like you propose. He brought an unreserved ticket on the Hiawatha service from Chicago to Milwaukee airport with a second segment on the same reservation from MKA to downtown Milwaukee. He spent the night in a hotel near MKA.

The conductor on the morning train was unable to process his ticket. The App kept telling him that the reservation was already used.

The conductor could clearly see that he had a valid ticket, but he couldn't process it via the App. He did let the friend take his ride, but who knows if those points will ever show up?

That could be solved by Amtrak sending a new PDF (and refreshing the iPhone App info) after the upgrade is processed showing F Class.

On 2153 this morning out of BOS the FC crew had no idea how the e-ticketing would work. He was interested to see my "ticket" on my iPhone (for tomorrow's travel, I was not able to get an e-ticket for travel today), and clearly there has been ZERO training of the FC crew so they know what to expect. I mentioned that people can board with just their iPhone ticket, and he seem puzzled by that - and by the concept that he would have to get the passenger to scroll down to the small print that says first class (geez - why not put that next to the QR code) and by the fact that there will be no ticket to put in the back of the seat.

Another passenger said e-tickets will not be issued if a passenger uses upgrade coupons. Not sure if that was accurate, but he seemed to be speaking from experience.

I am debating whether to print and carry my paper e-tickets for travel, or to just rely on the iPhone app. Seems like it will be easier to carry the paper tickets whenever possible.

I am still interested in a clarification as to how refunds work. The website suggests that once the e-ticket is issued (immediately) you are ticketed and subject to the usual policies (i.e. no refund, only voucher unless you want to pay a 10% penalty) but if i try to cancel my e-ticket for tomorrow it suggests I will get a full refund, just like the old days before I printed the ticket.

I hope you convey this experience to Customer Relations, and that AGR Insider is reading this. OBS crew tend to be rather set in their ways and this is a huge procedural change for them.

Personally, I will continue to print a physical document no matter what. I always want to have a paper record of my trips for reference and historical record. I also don't want to risk any technical glitches or damage using my iPhone (both of which I have seen play out at airports). For the same reasons, I also always print my BPs when flying, even in this era of mobile BPs.

The website has always been unclear about how to avoid the 10% penalty, hasn't it?

I just cancelled an e-ticket and got the full refund.

Curious - where does the site suggest that a ticket for tomorrow has different cancellation rules?

Yeah, I don't know if this is an intentional change or an oversight, but I've tried this a bunch of times and whether you cancel at the kiosk or on the website (and regardless of whether you've printed the e-ticket document at the kiosk or any other way), you get the full refund with no 10% deduction. Cool, if it sticks.

Speaking of connections to airports, I wonder if the kiosks will be issuing Continental (err, sorry, United) codeshare segments as Amtrak e-tickets now?

It would be super cool if United could link up to this somehow so that UA OLCI (and the UA mobile app) would give you a valid Amtrak QR code, rather than the go-use-the-Amtrak-kiosk notice it gives you currently...

I wonder what this will mean for checking tickets in NYP... Lines are already long and slow enough and I suspect many persons will use their phone for etix. This is not as easily viewed by a "checker" as the paper... I sure hope they have done some good testing in CHI as to queueing.

Start the campaign now... End Ticket Checks!

Note it does appear if you choose e delivery, you can still print it at a QwikTrak...

Also, Bye Bye Delta, I suggest for the time being, this should be made a sticky given the good info on this new program.

Oh, it will totally be a mess for the checker even in the best-case scenario. Otherwise, so many easy ways to add 5-10 seconds per person:

- Phone went into screen lock.
- Phone on power save, screen impossibly dim
- Changed reservation, opened up the wrong PDF
- Opened confirmation email, forgot to open PDF
- PDF is open, need to spend 5 seconds zooming/scrolling.
- etc...

Maybe e-tickets will accelerate the demise of the ticket check. :)

Speaking of Newark, any idea how the e-tickets will work with the AirTrain?

Wow, you are so right. All the more reason to use the mezzanine boarding strategy at NYP, and if at all possible, never board a train at all in PHL!

I have never really understood why ticket check exists at some stations, when it is so inconsistently used. At WIL they never do it; at NYP they do it upstairs but not downstairs; at WAS they do it for coach passengers but not if you are boarding from the Acela lounge; and so on.

Lately every time I've boarded an Acela from the lounge, to my great dismay I've had to fish out my tickets for someone standing by the door to the track. Seems that they didn't want to miss out on the fun of checking those who were already checked just so they could get into the lounge.

Well since there is already someone there who has to check the regular style tickets to let Amtrak passengers through the gate, I suspect that they'll just check the eTicket in whatever form it is presented.

Tolkiennut has moved to sticky this thread. Any discussion? Hearing no discussion or dissension, motion is carried. :D 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... :cool:

"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.

Reward Ticket Questions
 

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?

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

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!

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?!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.