Website/app IT issues
 

Just wanted to report on a couple of glitches I seem to be having:

1) When trying to book a ticket on Amtrak.com in Chrome v44 on Win8.1, I get to the payment page, enter my card number, click submit, acknowledge the new popup to review the itinerary...and am then taken to a page on Amtrak's low-vision site (??) saying that there was an error. IE works fine, so it seems limited to Chrome. I did not try Firefox.

2) The iPhone app seems to randomly log me out. Sometimes it'll appear to keep me logged in for weeks, but then I might be in the app looking at an upcoming trip, switch to another app for a moment, and come back to find that it has logged me out. Mildly frustrating.

3) On a recent trip, the conductor at SBP (crew change point) scanned my e-ticket in the app about 20 minutes before the train's (delayed) arrival. When I went to board, the SCA asked to see my ticket. I tried to pull it up in the app and it had disappeared, telling me I had to obtain a paper ticket.

4) I just booked a multi-city trip SKN-OKJ-SJC. The trip and corresponding ticket is not showing up in the iOS app. AFAIK, there has never been any delay or anything before trips show up in the app. Hopefully it will show up eventually, though.

5) I had booked an SJC-PRB trip for next week several days ago. I am able to view it in the app. However, it is not showing up on Amtrak.com in my list of upcoming trips. (Only the trip I booked above in #4 is showing up on Amtrak.com).

Just wanted to report these issues to see if anyone else has noticed anything similar and also in the event AGR Insider is able to pass them along.

2. iPhone app does log me out on occasion too - agree, mildly frustrating

4. I find that this happens when the email address and phone number utilized on the specific booking do not match you account records. It seems that your phone #, email address, and Amtrak Guest Rewards # all need to match on the specific booking otherwise it will not show up in the app. You can instead take the Reservation Number and utilize the Lookup function (Trips then Lookup in upper right corner) in the iPhone app to find your trip and import a ticket into Passbook - even if you info all matches you might want to try the Lookup function to validate you can see the ticket and import into Passbook if you so desire

Where a trip is viewable (on Amtrak.com, in the Android/iOS app), depends on how it was originally booked (over the phone, on Amtrak.com, or via an app) but I don't remember the complete set of rules.

I do remember that a trip booked via an Android/iOS app is not viewable on Amtrak.com (or was not viewable the last time I tried to use the website to cancel a ticket).

There is a post in here somewhere from AlanB that explains why this happens.

Good point. I recently changed my billing address, and that probably is the cause.

Interesting. I think I did book that CS trip via the app after I got annoyed with Chrome not working. That would explain that.

Still, if it's confusing for me, it's something Amtrak should address, because regular people have no hope of understanding it. ;)

More discussion in this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amtra...app-quirk.html

It sounds like the 3 front-ends (the website, the Android/iOS apps, and the one the CSRs use) feed into ARROW, the backend system that creates/contains the reservation, but the information is not uniformly populated back to the other front-ends.

These things can happen with app from any company. Even if the app is good, you can always run in to trouble with connectivity.

The safe way is to take a screenshot of the ticket/barcode.

Amtrak appears to have changed their website. It now (in my opinion) looks like an Amtrak-ized version of the Southwest website.

I hate the Amtrak app. It logs me out as soon as I either switch apps or hit the home button.

I'm the farthest thing from a curmudgeon when it comes to website redesign, but I can't find anything. :p I had to use Google to find a blog post to find a link to the live train location/status map, and when I opened it, it wouldn't load in Chrome...

It's on this page now (and not, AFAICT, on the homepage): http://www.amtrak.com/find-train-bus...s-train-routes (click "Track your train / Check train status")

Anyone else find it not working for them in Chrome? Works in FF.

Works fine for me in Chrome

Yikes!

Amtrak gave me a heart attack this morning. I woke up at 8am (in time for my 10:02-delayed-to-10:22 southbound Coast Starlight) and the Passbook notification on my homescreen said "Departs at 7:02am."

Wait, what?? I missed my train?

Somehow the Amtrak Passbook pass's time zone settings are screwed up or something. So, another report of something to look into. This is probably the first time I've used Passbook on the west coast--the times have always looked fine when using it on the east coast, so I'm guessing it's a time zone issue.

Forgot to take a screen shot.

Yeah, it does today, too. Maybe a temporary glitch with my browser yesterday.

Sounds like the Amtrak app is not passing time zone information to Passbook.

Were you on the east coast when you booked the trip? Somehow the trip got recorded as 10:02am ET.

On an Android phone, there is an "Add to calendar" button for the reservation.

I just booked a ticket departing Chicago Union station next week at 5:15pm, and, after adding it to the calendar, it appears in my Google calendar as 5:15pm ET.

So, there is your bug.

Maybe AGR Insider can point us to the team at Amtrak Technology that rewards users for finding simple bugs that should have been captured during beta testing. ;)

No, I booked it last week while I was in Vallejo.

Perhaps related but could very well be separate. Google Calendar has its own time zone quirks, and I'd suspect they're dealt with separately from how one deals with Apple's Passbook. That said, it does seem that Amtrak believes the world is centered on the East Coast (a view shared by many East Coasters, IME...). :p

In both cases the correct time zone is not being received from the Amtrak app, so they appear to be somewhat related.

I don't know what quirks Google Calendar has, but it books the trip in the time zone of your phone, which is how you'd expect it to behave if it doesn't otherwise get any time zone information.

Been awhile since I booked an Amtrak ticket, but I just tried now and am still getting the redirect to the Amtrak low-vision site with an error at the bottom saying "We are sorry but an error has occurred."

This comes immediately after submitting payment.

I tried it twice. No go.

I ended up buying my ticket through the iOS app, but this is quite annoying.

https://storage.googleapis.com/flyer...siteerrors.png https://storage.googleapis.com/flyer...iteerror2s.png

I'm trying to buy tickets LAX-SAN and it is showing the durations as around 1 hour (! didn't know our high speed rail was up and running :-)) by train, 90 minutes by bus. Also, I don't do this enough to know for sure, but it looks like some trains aren't showing up at all. Also, tried to select the outbound journey but the web site also added a random Irvine-San Diego leg to my cart even without my selecting it. Truly random this morning.

Depending on what dates you're searching, this may relate to the upcoming trackwork service disruption and not an IT bug. You should see an exclamation icon linking to the above notice for those dates.

Thanks for helping this infrequent Amtrak rider. This looks like the issue. The service disruption happens to fall on the weekend when I need to be in San Diego... my bad luck, bummer to have to drive now.

Only the "lite version" of Amtrak.com is showing up for me. Anyone else having this experience?

Yes. It started last night (Monday) with only a single page available for making simple reservations, and is still an issue.

How would a trackwork service disruption speed up the time between LAX and SAN to 1 hour by train and 90 minutes by bus? :confused: Wouldn't every bus get a speeding ticket going that fast? :confused:

I don't recall the details on the bus bit, but on the train bit, someone upthread explained and it was right -- the 1 hour was from Union Station to Irvine, then it was adding a bus link from Irvine to San Diego. But that didn't show in the "select a train" area, it only showed when I selected and then viewed in my itinerary/cart. More my confusion, I think, as an infrequent Amtrak'er. Still bummed, that San Diego run is one I use several times a year, just not this weekend!

Still an issue. Even static pages (like the one I tried to send a friend with info on Amtrak Express shipping) are broken.

Amtrak lite - a painful experience!
 

Just spent 40 minutes booking two simple round trips because you can't log in and for some reason all your data has to be entered on 2 different screens - it didn't carry over. By the time I was finished booking the first one, I was about ready to make the second a car trip, but I've got a work deadline and taking the train gives me 4+ more hours to work.

Really, Congress, there's no excuse for a national rail system as screwed up as Amtrak. It's embarrassing to any American who has traveled by rail in Europe.


p.s. was only able to book using an iPad, could not get the site to work at all from a desktop or laptop

Still no word from AGR Insider.....

The regular Amtrak.com Web site is now back up.

Well, it's not really an AGR issue, though sometimes Anthony is nice enough to go out of his way and help with general Amtrak questions.

Here's a mildly annoying issue:

Took #94 from NPN to BWI today. At WAS, the new crew announced that all tickets would need to be out and ready for scanning, regardless of origination point. Of course, I opened my app to discover that the e-ticket that was showing earlier had changed to "paper ticket required." She was able to look me up by name, but her annoyance was very clear (as it was throughout all of her PA announcements on the trip as well...).

If Amtrak employees are going to go through the process of re-scanning tickets downline, then the app should darn well support that use case and not time out so quickly.

This is quite odd. If I wanted to go from Boston South Station to St Albans, VT, it will not show me any connecting itineraries. It will error out saying that there is no service for what I am looking for (BOS-SAB). However, if I try to search it as a multi-city, it will let me book the BOS-NHV or BOS-SPG and the NHV/SPG-SAB separately, and will price both legs separately. This behavior exists in both the site and the app (although the app doesn't give me the option for multi-city ticketing)

Is anyone else not able to log into the app? I think it's been going on the last ~2 weeks. I uninstalled and re-installed to no avail.

Yeah, it seems like the app isn't sending the login info to the server. What I do is hit login 2/3 times after "this request could not be completed" appears.

In my experience, this is intermittent.

Yep, it's been that way for a couple of weeks for me. I just keep trying every few minutes until it goes through. Super annoying.

Ha ha, I can't believe that worked. Thank you. ^