ibrandsguest

I have an upcoming trip on Amtrak, on the Northeast Corridor. It looks like I may need to head back earlier than planned, although I'm not sure yet.

I see that Amtrak doesn't allow standby (i.e., taking an earlier or later train on the same day), either for free or by paying a standby charge.

I also see that ticket prices on Amtrak are going up as the day of my trip approaches.

So is the only solution in this case to just book multiple tickets as soon as possible, before prices get out of hand, for each train I might want to take?

If so, isn't this crazy? Doesn't it deprive Amtrak of revenue, since I'd be buying multiple tickets and cancelling them, perhaps at times too late to sell the seat again? If so, what is Amtrak's logic--is Amtrak just guessing that people will just cancel their original tickets and buy new tickets just before boarding, when prices are high?

Thanks.

BobH

Watch out for cancellation/ change fees.

Bob H

tonei

My guess is that enough people still buy walk-up fares on Amtrak and/or the pricing differential is high enough between their least and most desirable trains that Amtrak wants to preserve the last-minute pricing on reserved trains.

musicalbox

This might be why they recently added cancellation fees.

Additionally, you are not allowed to book multiple tickets for the same day (theoretically... it's an honor system unless someone notices, apparently).

"Duplicate and impossible bookings are prohibited.

Duplicate bookings include, but are not limited to, reservations on multiple trains by the same passenger on the same day between the same or similar cities on one or more itineraries, such as booking the 4:00 pm, 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm Acela Express trains between New York and Philadelphia."

zephyr17

It isn't entirely an honor system. While you can book it, my understanding is there is a batch process that automatically cancels duplicate reservations. So you could book it and then find out the next day it was auto-cancelled.

musicalbox

I don't book them often but I've never had one cancelled.

zephyr17

probably depends on how "smart" their dupe logic is.