musicalbox

The promotion where you buy 3 round trips between 1/5 and 2/29 on either Acela or NER and get one free on that service during the summer is live again this year. I actually saw it on the AGR site yesterday but the link didn't work. Today I got an email and was able to register.

Thing is, the minimum amount for a ticket to cost in order to count is $53 and I bought all my round trips months ago when the fare between my two stations, NY and Baltimore, was $52. It has since gone up to $53. Frustrating, but I was sure the Saver was still available on some of those and I could change them (it's worth it to pay six extra dollars to save $106 this summer).

Now I see that the Saver fare between NY and Baltimore has gone down to $49! Which brings to mind two thoughts.

a. So much for a free round trip this summer.
b. Do Amtrak NEC fares ever go down? I have never seen that. They just raised them in November. If so, I'm not complaining (just about this promotion!).

physioprof

Does anybody know if the First Class surcharge on Acela counts as part of the fare for purposes of making the minimum for this promotion?

physioprof

Also, does anyone know if AGR upgrade certificates can be applied to an Acela ticket earned in this promotion?

AlanB

It always has in the past; I can't imagine that it no longer does.

I've never seen them offer a free upgrade on a free ticket. I'd be shocked if that policy has changed.

for a couple of years, several years ago, they would allow one to pay for the upgrade on the free ticket. But the last few years they haven't allowed even that. So again, I can't imagine that they would allow a free upgrade on a free ticket.

physioprof

Hmm. Well, that stinks for me, as I only want to ride in F on Acela. Thanks for your help.

musicalbox

Just to update, I changed all the $53 and $52 fares I had already booked that I could (the Saver was no longer available on several), saving myself about $40, so that somewhat made up for losing the promotion. But on the ones I had to do over the phone (because one leg of the trip had a Saver available and one did not), the agent was also extremely surprised that the price had gone down and said he had never seen that bucket ever decrease in price.

Very curious.

vatraveler

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.3; en-us; HTC_T120C Build/IML74K) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30)

Yep, I was also surprised that the $49 fare is back. Must be competition from other modes of travel. Also, perception-wise, $49 sounds so much better than $52 or $53.

vatraveler

BTW, they should lower the threshold to $49. It has typically been the going rate at the time for Saver WAS-NYP, so why should this year be any different? I have trains booked into February - some at $49, some at $52, and a couple at $53. Only the latter will qualify.

musicalbox

I agree; not sure if the threshold was decided before the price change or if it was deliberate to knock out Saver fares.

musicalbox

Looks like they did switch it! I just got another email about the promotion and they changed the minimum ticket to $49. Just in case I was losing my mind, I checked the original email dated 12/29 and the fine print does indeed say $53. So I guess they put it together before the price change. Great news for those of us who book the Saver fare.

AGR Insider

To reflect the current price of Northeast Regional Saver Fares in select markets (such as WAS-NYP and NYP-BOS), we have revised the minimum spend requirement of a one-way segment from $53 to $49. More information about the promotion can be found here:

https://www.amtrak.com/take-three-ge...-guest-rewards


Anthony