GoAmtrak

To be clear, you still retain the full value towards future travel if you cancel close-in on a paid sleeper ticket.

calwatch

And in reality, selling one of those sleepers three days in advance of departure is going to be very difficult. I would prefer an overall no refund sleeper cancellation of, say, seven days across the board. If you cancel and it happens to sell, then you might get 80% of the sold value back as an e-Voucher, no guarantees.

The other thing is that coach and special redemption should allow no-shows the same way as paid tickets go - with points returned to the account. Because of this new rule, I have more of a tendency to book coach and special redemptions the day of travel (sometimes just a few minutes before travel), since Amtrak trains in my area rarely sell out except on blackout dates where redemptions don't work anyway.

ByeByeDelta

Last night, I called AGR to voice concern over this new policy. The agent was quite adamant that point reservations could be canceled right up to departure with no penalty and there was no policy change

"You must be looking at Amtrak's policy, we are Guest Rewards which is separate from Amtrak. Our policy hasn't changed."

Finally convinced her to pull up the AGR website and walked her through to program news. Yep - it was news to her. She encouraged me to send my comments via snail mail.

leemell

Well just to add one more to the list of people who have problems with the new cancellation policies, it does give me pause about booking a very long trip (10,000 miles) late next year knowing that at this great distance time-wise there are significant risks in being able to cancel or not. It is a lot of money and points. The new policies in both cash and points tickets have us wondering whether or not book now. Something we never did before.

jimhudson

Good news about extending the current Policy on AGR Award Cancellations in order to allow Input and Feedback from the Users! IMO having the cancellation Policy on AGR Awards be the same as Paid Reservations would be fair and make Sense! A 10% Penalty (withing Limits, a 100,000 Point Trip would be 10,000 Points which is a Steep Penalty) or Small "Fee" wouldnt be a Hardship on most of us and seems like a Win/Win Situation for Amtrak and the members! Thanks to Ms. Radke for handling this Matter in a Professional and Prompt Manner!

gatelouse

I'm going to challenge the conventional wisdom that sleepers don't sell at the last minute. On every train with sold out sleepers, there are coach passengers hoping that a room will open up. Amtrak used to keep wait lists for sleepers. Every time I've been on a train that had 2-3 rooms remaining within a week of departure, the train has sold out its sleepers every time save once.

What really hurts Amtrak, in my opinion, are those who book scarce accommodation types 10 months out, blocking sale to other interested customers, and cancel a couple of hours before departure, undermining Amtrak's yield management.

Your approach of "if it sells, you get a partial point refund" is fair in principle but probably too complicated to implement. I suspect a percentage penalty of some sort, increasing as departure day grows near, will be the eventual compromise.

honest_abe

Great! I can see it now:

"Mabel, someone just showed me a new policy we weren't told about. It's on our web page clear as day. If they cancel within 15 days, they lose all their points".

"Good thing you told me, Joe. I have someone on the line now and was just about to tell them 'No problem' about getting all their points back. Guess I get to be the first to implement it. I'll message the rest of the team."

gatelouse

One way to implement the equivalent of an eVoucher for AGR points is the same "virtual voucher" scheme that's used frequently in the "buy x, get 1 free" AGR promotions. The virtual voucher basically acts as a point escrow, allowing you to redeem a single award up to the point value of the voucher, prior to said voucher's expiration date.

Returning points for close-in sleeper cancellations into an expiring virtual voucher would give good parity with paid travel policies...but I wouldn't recommend it. First, it's complicated to explain. Second, there's no real need for policy parity in my opinion--policies for airline award tickets vary widely from their paid counterparts. All I ask is a consistent policy for cancelled sleeper awards that's fair to the member and to Amtrak.

nerd

Look, people: the free lunch can't go on forever.

No inventory control on award tickets?
No concept of Saver/Standard awards?
No close-in booking fees?
No award cancellation fees?

In the pick-your-poison-game, I would gladly accept a fee for the latter, since that's apparently a big revenue suck.

No reason Amtrak should let you buy the last room on, say, a sold-out Zephyr in August for the standard amount of points and let you cancel it an hour before departure.

jackal

A fee? Perhaps (waived for elites like the airlines). Losing all of your points? Far too harsh, IMHO.

nerd

Comparing to the airlines, is that apples-to-apples? After all, they do have inventory control on award space, and saver/standard redemption levels.

That's not to say that there's a better alternative to losing your points, but you can't match it up point-by-point with airline programs.

3Cforme

AGR members already took a big swig of poison with much higher redemption costs effective 1 April 2012. The complexity and fee-riddled nature of airline FF programs endear them to no travelers; AGR should not emulate them in this matter.

I could live with a sliding scale of point forfeiture for late cancellations of sleeper accommodations, perhaps:

Cancel 14 days or more before travel, 100% of points refunded

Cancel 7-14 days, 80% refunded

Cancel day of travel - 7 days, 60% refunded (building on the idea that it's possible for Amtrak and AGR to use a waitlist and/or sell upgrades to sleepers on-board so AGR/Amtrak do not regularly suffer full loss).

A cash fee as penalty is a total non-starter for me.

I welcome the two-month delay in implementation announced by AGR insider and hope AGR uses this time well to assess next steps.

musikdude

I think most people who would need to cancel a sleeper reservation that was booked on points would only cancel within a few days of departure due to something that comes up work/family wise, emergency, etc. -

If someone knew they had a significant change to their plans a few weeks out from their travel dates, they would cancel/reschedule at that time. That is just normal in my opinion.

Therefore I suggest this policy:

Cancel anytime before 72 hours before departure date/time, then full refund of points. This allows Amtrak 3 days to resell the room.

Cancel anytime within 72 hours before departure, then a points penalty of 20 percent of the points value of the trip. This would be a sizable chunk but not a crazy amount. If you had a 35k trip booked, you would lose 7k this way, for example. That is a real enough penalty to feel it in your account.

Amtrak should try this policy for 6 months or a year and see what the results are. If, after that time, there are still too many last minute cancellations, then Amtrak can make a change again.

I feel this is a nice solution to the situation...

Exiled in Express

I do appreciate that concerns were listened to and this is at least being rethought, this change would have been forced without advance notice or discussion in the larger air miles programs. Thank you AGR Insiders. ^

15 days seems too punitive to me. I had a Cardinal roomette, a scarce commodity, on hold for months and after plans changed cancelled several weeks out at which point it became the only room available on that train at a $500+ price. It was resold within hours.

I am fine with a reasonable penalty for close in cancellations, just closer than 15 days and less than 100%. As to what that threshold is I am not sure, though I am leaning towards it being partially forfeited points rather than cash.

A Select (Plus) waiver does sound like a nice additional benefit but I have to wonder how many regular members have the points stash to be booking sleepers, let alone speculatively.

GoAmtrak

Only AGR know the breakdown, and that's why I hope they use this gracious gesture of postponement as an opportunity to do a truly analytical deep-dive into their member data and create a rational, fair method to set the right incentives. I like to give the AGR team a benefit of the doubt, but the initial announcement seemed to be an axe in place of a scalpel. I know they can do better to protect company revenue without so grievously harming the redemption opportunities.

For the record, we do have a few regulars on this board who spend heavily on their AGR MasterCards, but seldom ride on revenue tickets. I imagine there are many MC holders who only ride every now and then, with a fairly even split between revenue and award tickets.