View from the Wing

Randy Petersen puts the smack down and gets the straight story on Amtrak transfers to Choice Hotels.

I recently reported that Amtrak reduced the value of transfers to Choice Hotels with no notice and then removed the option altogether.

From NotiFlyer

[Members are] again be able to transfer points from Guest Rewards to their Choice Privileges account at a rate of 5,000 to 15,000 points, and transfers will be completed for members who were in the middle of a transfer when the closure occurred. According to Blakey, the exchange option will remain in effect through the end of 2007, at which time changes to the program will be instituted. As of Jan. 1, 2008, the Guest Rewards exchange program will only be available to elite members (Select and Select Plus) and members who hold an Amtrak co-branded MasterCard. Elite members will be able to transfer at a rate of 5,000 Guest Rewards points to 15,000 Choice Privileges points.



A few members have reported points being removed from their Choice Privileges accounts, points which had been transferred from Amtrak Guest Rewards. According to Blakey, the only members who have been impacted by these removals are those who opened more than one Amtrak Guest Rewards account, which violates the programs’ terms and conditions. He told us that any points removed from Choice Privileges accounts will be returned back into the members’ Guest Rewards account.

Amtrak twice made changes with no notice, then retracted some already-transferred points, but is putting those points back in accounts. They’ve also made the transfer option available again but just for the next two weeks, and next year you’ll need to get their co-branded credit card to be able to make Choice hotels transfers (at the new, lower rate).

At least they’re honoring redemptions already made, and coming clean on what they’re planning.

It was too good a deal to last — especially with a program that has such a bad reputation as Guest Rewards.

First Amtrak reduces the value of points transfers to Choice Hotels with no notice whatsoever. Now the option to transfer to Choice is gone entirely, a matter of days later.

This just piles on the history of customer unfriendly business practices for this program (limiting the number of points transferred out of the program in a year with no notice, dropping their partnership with United with no notice). The Carlson folks run the program like a true clown operation.

Just when I diss Amtrak Guest Rewards (and this doesn’t help with my trust of the program or with their customer service issues), they introduce a new redemption option — 5,000 Amtrak points convert to 25,000 Choice Privileges Points.

The extreme value here is:

• 5,000 Amtrak points yield 25,000 Choice points which convert to 5,000 miles with Air Canada, Alaska, American, Continental, Delta, Mexicana, Northwest, United, and USAirways. Talk about flexibility!
  

• 10,000 Amtrak points yield 50,000 Choice points which convert to 20 Southwest Rapid Rewards credits, more than enough (16 required) for a free ticket.
  

  50,000 Amtrak points yield 250,000 Choice points which convert to 100 Southwest Rapid Rewards credits, which earns you a companion pass and 6 roundtrip tickets (that can be used for you and your companion.

Now, Amtrak still imposes a limit of 25,000 points transferred out of its program in a calendar year (50,000 points if you’re an Amtrak elite). But you can always transfer out 25,000 in December and 25,000 in January.

Don’t park points in the Amtrak program — they make program changes without much if any notice — and don’t park points in Choice Privileges, either, because those points expire. But this is a great new option.

By the way, don’t transfer Choice Privileges points directly into Amtrak, the conversion there is 32,000 Choice points yield 5,000 Amtrak points. Instead, transfer 25,000 Choice points into 5,000 Continental into 5,000 Amtrak.

And finally, this means that Continental points now transfer 1:1 into all of the airlines that Choice points transfer to (up to 25,000 per year, the cap imposed by Amtrak for transfers out of its program).

So you have to ride the train, and at least they give you points for that. But that’s more or less all you can say about Amtrak Guest Rewards.

I used to like their 2500 point award, one-way in the Northeast Corridor for unreserved service. I’d keep some tickets on hand. Of course, Amtrak doesn’t even have unreserved service anymore. And they upped the point requirements with just hree weeks’ notice. And they both imposed maximum points transferred out of the program in a year and dropped United as a partner without any notice at all. These more or less made me not trust the Guest Rewards program.

But their problems go even farther. Amtrak Guest Rewards has just implemented online award booking. In other words, they’ve entered the ’90s. But there’s a glitch. In one of my tree trials, the system encountered an error, didn’t complete the booking, but had already pulled the points from my account. (A reason perhaps to stay with telephone award booking for the moment, as much as I hate the phone and even though telephone hours are limited, a customer service problem in and of itself.)

I emailed Guest Rewards, even knowing that their email customer service is lacking. But the response I got was a new low. It wasn’t a generic, random cut-and-paste reply. It was a non-reply. Here it is, in its entirety:

Thank you for contacting the Amtrak Guest Rewards Service Center.
Please call us at 800.307.5000 Monday - Friday from 8 am - 8 pm EST if you have further questions or concerns regarding your Amtrak Guest Rewards account.

It took three full days to receive this by the way. How could i have further questions, when they didn’t bother to try to reply to the first one at all?

Amtrak Guest Rewards - among the worst programs, up there with Radisson’s Goldpoints, and only marginally better than GlobalPass.

Amtrak’s new small business program allows you to earn points in addition to the standard Guest Rewards program both for your travel and those that enter your small business program membership number.

Accounts in this program earn 25% of the base points earned on Amtrak by each traveler.

Through December 31, 2007 enrollment code STR07 yields a 1500 point signup bonus.

(I got a copy of the offer and ignored it, so thanks to Samit for beating me over the head with it…)

The new Amtrak Visa is now up and running, offering 8000 bonus points with first purchase and no annual fee. Since it’s a Chase card, it may be churnable (Thus far, only the United card seems to disallow signing up over and over to pocket multiple bonuses).

Now, I still recommend the Starwood American Express as the best all-purpose credit card. And specific charges warrant some special-case cards.

But as far as truly no annual fee cards go, this one isn’t bad… although I don’t trust the underlying Amtrak Guest Rewards loyalty program, given its history of making changes without any notice whatsoever — miles used to be transferrable to outside programs without a cap and United used to be a transfer partner, for instance. Both changes were made without notice. And an increase in Amtrak train travel redemption levels was also dropped out of the sky without warning.

As mentioned back in January, the old MBNA–>Bank of America Amtrak Mastercard was discontinued. Now details of the new co-branded relationship have come out…

This fall a new Amtrak Mastercard will be issued by Chase, with no fee and a 2500 point signup bonus.

If you pre-register (you’ll need to log into your Amtrak account) with promo code 42507 you’ll get an email when the card is available and an extra 2500 point signup bonus for a total of 5000 points.

You will receive a total of 5,000 points with this Bonus Offer. 2,500 bonus points will post to your Chase credit card account and appear on your Chase statement and an additional 2,500 bonus points will post directly to your Amtrak Guest Rewards account and appear on your Amtrak Guest Rewards statement. Amtrak is wholly liable for the 2,500 bonus points posted directly to your Amtrak Guest Rewards account. Please allow 6-8 weeks after your first purchase for bonus points to post to both your Chase credit card and Amtrak Guest Rewards accounts.

Taking a cue from recent airline promotions, Amtrak is offering Buy 3, Ride Free on Acela. 3 roundtrips or even 6 one-ways on the Acela Express by May 19 earns an Acela Business class or Regional Coach class roundtrip.

Registration is required.

And in one of the more annoying clauses I’ve seen (for folks like me looking for every angle), they’ve pretty much ruled out the possibility of doing the promo cheaply or quickly:

Minimum spend of $75 per qualifying trip one-way or $150 per roundtrip. Limit of one qualifying roundtrip or two one-ways per member per day.

Grr.

The Amtrak Mastercard is on hold — no new applications are being accepted.

Amtrak and Bank of America are ending their relationship. Only purchases that are posted prior to the closing date of the May 2007 statement will earn Amtrak points.

Presumably a new bank will partner with Amtrak over the next few months, but there’s currently no new partner in place.

Amtrak is offering double points on train travel through December 16 (excluding November 21 - 28). Registration is required.

Amtrak is advertising over at Flyertalk.com, and a banner brings you to a signup bonus promotion — enter promotion code NEC06 while opening an Amtrak Guest Rewards account and receive 3000 bonus points for your first train trip taken within 90 days of signing up instead of the usual 500 points.

That’s enough for a one-way Northeast corridor ticket, and almost enough to transfer points to Continental or Hilton.

Since they can’t make running trains profitable, Amtrak is planning to build a hotel out of part of the Baltimore train station.

The station is a terrible location for a hotel and the project has been unable to attract private financing or even a *brand* (like Sheraton, Marriott, etc) in the past.

The best the piece can find an analyst to say about the project is that the hotel might get business if all the other hotels in Baltimore are full…

… Though I suppose they could get business from Amtrak stranding passengers. Heh.

(Hat tip to Hotel Chatter.)

Amtrak is offering 500 bonus points when you transfer 5000 or more points into your Guest Rewards account from one of their partners by March 31.

While Amtrak hardly offers a great program, it’s a reasonable place to move Continental miles for sure.

Log in to your Amtrak Guest Rewards account and then register using promo code 30806.

Amtrak is offering 250 Guest Rewards points for picking up a ticket at a QuikTrak machine by March 31.

Log into your Amtrak Guest Rewards account and then register for the promo using code 11906.

Alas the bonus is limited to one per member.

Update: The promo didn’t say anything about being targeted, but a reader emails a response that it’s in invalid offer so it might just be targeted. You’d think that Guest Rewards would say that if it is, but the folks running this program are among the worst in the industry so nothing surprises me at all.

Amtrak has announced changes to its reward chart effective January 3, 2006.

Business and first class redemptions on Acela Express and Metroliner trains go up 500 points apiece (to 8,000 and 10,500 each way respectively).

$50 gift cards go from 5000 points to 6000 points, a 20% increase. It used to be that Amtrak points were worth a penny apiece when redeemed for merchandise at this level. That penny-a-point parity threshold has now been breached.

However, if you want to retain that purchasing power you’ll need to redeem 10,000 points for newly introduced $100 gift cards set to be on offer next month.

I got the news in my online statement which arrived by e-mail today. Three weeks notice isn’t enough for these kinds of changes — but it’s better than the no-notice changes Amtrak is known for, such as shutting down transfers to United overnight and capping transfers out of the program at 25,000 points per calendar year without warning.

Amtrak’s online mall is offering 100 points for spending $100 by the end of the year.

For several years Amtrak has been using revenue management techniques in the midwest. Now they’ve introduced the concept to the Northeast Corridor.

Early last month, Amtrak began charging its Northeast Corridor passengers 15 percent to 25 percent more for tickets purchased close to departure than for the same tickets bought weeks in advance.



The new structure is based on the level of sales prior to departure. The more popular the route, such as the Northeast Corridor Metroliner or Acela on a Friday afternoon, the higher the last-minute rate.



“If a train is almost sold out, you may pay a higher fare if you book at the last minute,” said Amtrak spokeswoman Tracy Connell.

My first reaction was that this is long overdue from a business prudence standpoint, but anathema to travelers. My second reaction was that a key competitive advantage that Amtrak has over the various airline shuttle products is convenience and price flexibility. It remains to be seen how this higher pricing will translate in terms of ridership.

Furthermore, alas, most current Amtrak discounts require a 3-day advance purchase.

Amtrak is offering 20% off on service to Philadelphia. In reality, the discount applies to all Northeast Corridor trains, though Metroliner and Acela Express are as usual excluded.

Discount code V735 is valid on tickets purchased through April 22, 2006 for travel through April 25, 2006. Blackout dates are: November 22-29, 2005; Dec 16-Jan 2, 2006; Jan 13-16, 2006; Feb 17-20, 2006; April 13-17, 2006.

On itineraries where V735 is not available, try H542. It’s a 15% discount that seems to work on most trips, including Metroliner and Acela Express. It’s only valid through December 15.

Earn 1000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points for signing up for the program with promo code MIDWS and taking a train trip by April 30. (This is an improvement over the standard 500 point offer.)

(Hat tip to Free Frequent Flyer Miles.)

Register to earn double points on Metroliner and Acela Express trains through the end of the year.

(Whenever there’s a bonus that requires registration, register. You may not think you’ll be getting on a train, or flying between two cities, but you may wind up surprised — registering for the bonus gets you the miles you never expected.)