What’s going on here Amtrak? Mr. Deals is not happy. I go through all of this hard work getting Select status and Amtrak goes right ahead and changes their redemption policies. I worked very hard for those points and now I am going to have to redeem more to enjoy “free” travel. I don’t know Amtrak, I was loving you earlier, but that’s starting to change.
For those of you that haven’t heard, here’s the deal (I guess it’s not a deal). If you travel in the Northeast US, like the Deals family, a one-way Coach Class ticket is changing in value from 3,000 points to 4,000 points. From the looks of it, point redemptions have increased anywhere from 500 to 1,500 points for your normal US routes. If you are taking a train with a 1 to 3 bedroom cabin it looks like you are going to be dishing out another 5,000 to 10,000 points. Not too sweet. Oh and all of this starts April 1st, 2012. You still have some time to redeem for the old values prior to April 1st for travel after April 1st, so if you know you have a trip coming up, get on it. You can check out the new redemption award chart here.
Now as the resident Amtrak expert in the Deals household, I felt it was my duty to alert the DealsWeLike.com readers of this drastic change in policy. It’s been keeping me up at night since I received the email notification.
Lets hope there’s some more opportunities on the way to earn these points. I’ll keep everyone updated.
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and this is why I take $1 trips on Megabus.
@Hao – I am a huge fan of the $1 Megabus trips!
tell him to suck it up. It’s called inflation. =)
@Hao – Megabus and Bolt Bus are great! Luckily I can get the points from my work trips with Amtrak and not have to think about traffic.
@mike – Booo inflation!
@Mr Deals… did you read the personal post from Gary to you and one other program member? 😉
http://boardingarea.com/viewfromthewing/2012/03/03/amtrak-guest-rewards-redemption-prices-going-up-april-1/
@DGF- Mr. Deals sure does love his Amtrak points!
@deltagoldflyer – huh?
“He’s a parasite… like the one I got from eating Sushi on Amtrak.” -Liz Lemon
I am a huge Amtrak fan, as well, but heard about the points increase a few months back. Amtrak really has given a decent amount of notice, and allowed people to book many reward tickets at the current prices. Compare that to hotel companies and airlines that seemingly change their award charts overnight. Amtrak rewards were considered by many to be some of the best redemption values around – so, this is not really any kind of surprise -disappointment, yes – surprise, no.
On top of that, they have allowed the redemption rates for their roomettes to remain the same.
Of all of the point inflation that has occurred, this one isn’t all that bad.
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