regoarrarr

I recently used 100,000 Chase points (transferred to Amtrak) to book my family of 8 for 2 family bedrooms on the California Zephyr from CHI-DEN (roundtrip).

On our outbound leg, the Zephyr was delayed 13 hours, which caused a crazy mess of the first day of our vacation.

I called Customer Relations about compensation and was quoted 2 $350 Amtrak vouchers. Not bad, though I'm not sure what the best way we'd use them for.

In reading around, it seems that the formula that they use is based on the delay and the price of the ticket, but I was wondering if we knew the formula at all. The phone agent did mention that it was a 13 hour delay on a 20 hour expected trip, so I didn't know if he was plugging that into some formula.

Further complicating things is that I paid with points. The cash price for 2 family bedroom cars one-way was ~$3200 (yikes!), so if that's the case, it seems like the vouchers should be higher than that for a train that was nearly 70% delayed.

Anyway just looking for others' datapoints.

Ispolkom

Over the past five years, I've asked for compensation four times. The amount offered did not seem to follow any pattern.

For instance, toilets out in sleeping car for 20 hours on the California Zephyr (altitude issues) = $300. Toilets out in sleeping car for 26 hours on the Lake Shore Limited (sleeper put in service with nonfunctioning toilets) = $100, I think.

I've personally never asked for compensation for a delay that wasn't Amtrak's fault, but I ride the Empire Builder every couple of months. If I started asking for delay compensation on that train, I'd be doing nothing else. I didn't much like the 8 hour delay on my last trip, but it wasn't as though Amtrak had put the rocks on the tracks that delayed the train, so I grinned and bore it.

OZ Man

When I did the Empire Builder 2 years ago with reward points, we hit a bulldozer delaying us for 15 hours. No power or working bathrooms for 6 hours of that. 350 seems to be the magic number for delays for a trip that would have cost $2200 if I was not using a reward ticket. Last year we got stuck on the coast starlight overnight in the same spot for 6 hours due to track work and come into Sacramento about 8 hours late. We were bussed to Reno to catch the California Zephyr train. I was so pissed I missed Donners pass which was the purpose of the whole trip and was offered a $400 voucher. Unfortunatly, there is no way of refunding the points which I would have rather done in order to do it again to be able to see Donners Pass on the Zephyr.

3Cforme

Compensation is a productive search term in this forum.

I've complained about sanitary conditions, poor communications (failing to follow company protocol) and lack of advertised services but not, IIRC, a simple delay. That would be like complaining that it rains in Florida during hurricane season - yeh, it does, a lot.

HGHUA

I just got $275 for a 4 hour delay on the cali zepher and also the horrible last meal of beef stew due to its late arrival.

stevester

I was in the same train, Zephyr that started on 20th in CHI. We were told a tree hit freight ahead of us near Ottumwa, Iowa during the storm.

HGHUA

I was on the train two days earlier. It was mostly a ridiculous 10 mph pace due to heat restrictions. We pulled into salt lake with just 5 min till the engineers timeout. Whew.

progapanda

Ha, what a coincidence. I was on the same train from DEN-EMY. I got in touch with Amtrak to complain about malfunctioning toilets in one of the sleeper cars, and they offered $250 in compensation for that service failure and the 4 hour delay.