jackal

Waived for elites, of course, as every airline does.

You really need to implement a sensible Same Day Change policy for elites before pushing forward with that. You've already lost $220 in revenue for the month of January from me solely because of this.

GoAmtrak

Here's a negative report regarding the prohibition against on-aboard cash upgrades on AGR tickets: Sleeper Upgrade Policy When Using AGR Awards

Bolding mine. That was my point exactly with this change. AGR Insider has not indicated any willingness to reconsider, I suspect due to a well-intentioned but misguided aim to nudge members to redeem the inflated bedroom award if they want a bedroom. Not everyone has or wants to spend that many points, but would certainly redeem for a roomette and play the lottery of a chance to pay on-board. Why should Amtrak not take the incremental cash on-board if the bedroom would go empty anyway? Airlines and hotels offer cash upgrades on award space all the time. @:-) (Secondarily, AGR still doesn't even offer the inverse -- the ability to upgrade revenue bookings to sleepers using points -- which is a near-universal feature of loyalty programs.)

Amtrak is clearly leaving revenue and member goodwill on the table here. I hope this policy is not set in stone forever, just as AGR ultimately walked back the cancellation policy due to the unintended consequences pointed out on this thread.

ByeByeDelta

I suspect the policy is due, at least in part, to system limitations. The functionality to upgrade an AGR ticket with cash may not exist in ARROW, much less in the conductor's eTicket application on the train.

I've have a similar experience at work. We upgraded to a new retail point-of-sale system two years ago. Our previous system allowed you to upsell components within a promotional package; the new system cannot. Our data genius has proven we're missing ~$10mil a year in sales due to the limitation. Sounds like a no-brainer to fix, right? Well...

After 18 months of political bickering and departmental dancing, the enhancement was approved and funded so the POS vendor could start building the functionality. I think it's just now been received for testing.

So, we've lost ~$20mil in sales because some people thought a one-time expense of $350,000 to fix the problem was too costly.

GoAmtrak

I would very much appreciate it if AGR Insider could please confirm or refute this theory. I don't believe the policy change coincided with a global cutover to e-ticketing. It just appeared to be an arbitrary change from the previous way of doing business: It never mattered how you got on-board the train, the conductor had authority to sell you upgraded space regardless of your original ticket type.

If it's like the situation your company experienced, I then seriously hope that someone at Amtrak is paying attention to the lost revenue and can champion prioritizing a fix. If it's an intentional policy, what's the rationale?

Either way, a more thorough explanation seems appropriate for why things are the way they are. Any customer who seeks -- and is actively denied -- the opportunity to purchase a perishable good that no one else wants, deserves an honest explanation.

AlanB

I believe that you are correct, there is a limitation within ARROW that prevents you from mixing cash/CC & AGR. And it's a limitation that is due to the age of the program, not something that is being done intentionally to penalize people.

Furthermore, Amtrak is already doing everything that it can to discourage onboard upgrades even with paid reservations. There is no longer any incentive to upgrade while onboard the train. You'll pay the same onboard as you would have paid with the agent in the station where you boarded the train.

In fact, many conductors today will simply tell someone wishing to do so to just call up Amtrak and have a phone agent process the upgrade is its far easier for the agent to do it than the conductor. Then one his/her phone updates with the info, they'll move you.

So with Amtrak in general discouraging onboard upgrades, I think it highly unlikely that AGR would or even could change the policy for reservations using points.

AlanB

Yes, the conductor used to be able to sell you an upgrade prior to eTicketing, but frankly only a fool would consider doing so with an AGR reservation. If you boarded with an AGR roomette reservation and wanted to upgrade to a Bedroom onboard, you threw away your points to do so.

The system gave you zero dollars for the value of your roomette, so you paid the low bucket price for the Bedroom and essentially lost your points since they paid for a room that you basically never used and you got no value for those points.

I'm not sure if the same happened with a coach AGR reservation, I never tried that but I did try the above.

GoAmtrak

Alan, thanks for confirming that it's a technology limitation.

There have been cases where I have been in a party of two on a roomette redemption from a family member's account (as a gift). The paid upgrade to a bedroom was a no-brainer. There are obviously still people out there such as the guy on the linked thread who are happy to pay top dollar to upgrade bedrooms on roomette awards.

It's regrettable that AGR (or their Amtrak overlords) haven't instituted a workaround. Without knowing the inner-workings of the new system, I'd imagine that a procedure could be established allowing the conductor to call Help Desk and have them issue a new, separate ticket for the upgrade charge. Is the system really so inflexible that it couldn't accommodate that? Was a workaround considered and ruled out as part of a cost-benefit analysis?

Certainly, the value has gone from most on-board upgrades on paid tickets. But especially vis-a-vis coach pax, Amtrak is short-sighted to discourage the practice. Despite all the options presented at booking, there is a definite impulse-buy factor. Many times I've seen conductors successfully upsell coach pax (especially if the conductor has announced the availability of upgrade space).

In modern times, I still strongly feel that conductors should feel empowered to announce when sleeper space is still available for upgrade. Tap into the good mood that being on the train puts people in (or should), especially if they've had a couple drinks already or are otherwise in vacation mode. But, make it possible to direct the pax to complete the upgrade using the Amtrak app. Or, the conductor could still call it in like any other ticket change if they don't have a smartphone (or if the app can't be programmed to handle it). Isn't it to Amtrak benefit if the impulse-buyer just shelled out $500 for something that might have been available for $200 a few hours earlier?

In short, I think the on-board upgrade program was one of Amtrak's most clever marketing practices and I'm sad they're apparently throwing the baby out with the bathwater in the name of progress and simplification.

AlanB

I suspect that he didn't realize what would have happened in the past, and I'm not so sure that he would have paid for it after realizing that he'd get no credit.

Part of the reason for the removal of the discounted or low bucket onboard upgrades was because eTicketing made things far more difficult for the conductor to process onboard upgrades. I'm not aware of the particulars, but what I have heard suggests that the process is much harder now than back when they had to push a few pieces of paper around and make a phone call to space control to block out the sleeper and get the cost.

In addition to the aforementioned issues with how hard it is for the conductor to process things, in general Amtrak isn't running around with that many open sleepers. And frankly most conductors never made any effort to announce an upgrade and I've seen many complaints of conductors saying there were no open rooms, when people knew full well that there were open rooms.

But really Amtrak is discouraging people from doing an onboard via the conductor. As noted, anyone can call Amtrak and state: "I'm on train X right now in coach and I'd like to upgrade to a sleeper." The agent will take all needed info, process the upgrade, and then you just find the conductor to be escorted to your sleeper. Unless you finish the phone call right before a cellular dead zone, the conductor's iPhone will have the information within minutes of one completing the transaction.

GoAmtrak

Just to clarify, I sprung for the upgrade. The account holder was not traveling with me and could only gift a certain number of points towards my award. I was happy to take the AGR points for the purchase on my AGR MC. That anecdote, I concede, describes a rather rare situation.

Despite the fact that sleeper space is rarer than it used to be (which is certainly true with rising demand and stagnant capacity), I still see a niche for active marketing either by conductors or OBS personnel. I understand that conductor ticketing paperwork and cash-handling were inefficiencies, but eliminating them should not shut the door to what was a clear revenue source for perishing inventory.

Maybe Amtrak should talk to United about monetizing premium space. UA has clearly devoted a lot of resources to prioritizing their shoddy IT system to at least be good at taking money at every opportunity. There are upsell offers at booking, within reservations after booking, in post-booking e-mails, and during check-in. They are so aggressive with the upsells that elites regularly get shut out of complimentary or cert-based upgrades because of them, independent of other factors. AGR wouldn't face elites losing any such "entitlement" from the program, since there would be no hurt feelings about missed upgrades that never existed to begin with. I'm willing to bet that Amtrak has rooms stay empty for certain segments more often than UA has empty premium cabin seats.

How about this? If the conductor on any given segment of an LD route knows there's upgrade space available, s/he could tell the conductor app to push out alert notifications to everyone on the manifest who has the Amtrak app open on their own phones. This could include appropriate pricing (perhaps dynamic if the system could handle it) for their given city pairs and the ability to purchase on the spot. The conductor could announce the "push" or let it play out silently.

AlanB

But the door isn't shut. The onus is simply on the traveler to call Amtrak.

Could Amtrak consider trying to get staff to announce that rooms remain available and that anyone interested should call Amtrak? Sure. Will they? Don't know, but probably not. Even if they did set such a policy, it'll still be difficult to get all crews to do it uniformly.

I've heard no recent reports of this, but I don't believe that they've stopped this either. For many years Amtrak has had a practice of calling people a few days prior to departure if they have several rooms available and offering cheaper than current bucket pricing if the person take the upgrade during that call.

First, I'm guessing but I suspect that at best you'd have an audience of maybe 5 at most. And the odds are good that at least a few, if not the majority, would already be in a sleeper.

And then unless the person provided their cell phone number at the time of booking, there'd be no way to reach everyone. Furthermore, not everyone is using the App on their phone, some use it on their iPad which may or may not have a cell number.

Finally, I'm not even sure if it is possible to have such a reverse flow of info, such that you can tell who has the Amtrak App open on their phone. Sure, if they're checking in at stations some info is being transmitted to Amtrak, but I'm not sure if that's enough to tie things to a manifest.

That said, no need for the conductor to do any of that. It could more easily and safely be triggered by someone at Amtrak with the correct tools. With eTicketing they have that real time info and know what rooms went unsold and who no-showed.

jackal

I do agree with everything in your post except this.

My United app consistently pushes information about flight status and changes in my booking to me via the APN (Apple Push Notification) service. It does this because it a) knows about my current reservations and b) because I am logged into my account through the United app.

All that Amtrak needs to do is send an APN push notification out to anyone booked on that train notifying them of the availability of an upgrade special. They don't need to know anything about cell phone numbers or locations or anything--just that anyone logged into the Amtrak app who is also on that train will get it.

Now, whether that can be integrated with ARROW is a completely separate topic, but the actual mechanics of sending the notification out are pretty simple.

nerd

And separate the award inventory from revenue inventory, of course, as every airline does.

jackal

The two don't necessarily have to be tied together as you're trying to claim. Do you actually not want Amtrak's program to improve?

darben

Think about what you are saying here. Separate award inventory would be a downgrade IMO

GoAmtrak

Methinks that was nerd's subtle point exactly.