As I started to describe in my previous post, the proper way to deal with Amtrak is to call the phone center. If you reach someone who seems clueless, hang up, and try again. Words to the wise, my friends, words from experience.
So, from last time, I had our rail pass numbers, and I needed to reserve the individual segments. On the Amtrak web site, I couldn’t find a way to reserve against a rail pass, so it was back to the telephone.
I called the Amtrak phone center, and got an agent who happened to be a trainee (no pun intended). Had I hung up, I would have saved a lot of time. But I didn’t. After discussing the first leg of the journey, the trainee agent determined that the two rail passes were not associated with one another, so each reservation would need to be done twice. When I asked if he could associate the two, he put me on hold while he talked with the support desk. This process was repeated several times during the call. But, to make an hour call shorter, he was able to merge the rail passes and reserve the first segment, but I would need to go down to the station within a week to pick up the passes.
So, the following Saturday, I once again found myself at the ticket office. There was a much shorter line this time. I explained the situation to the ticket agent, who wrote up my pass and had me show ID and sign for it. Then she processed the ticket for the first segment, and I signed that as well. “Where’s your wife?” she asked me. At home, of course. “I can’t issue her pass or ticket without her being present, or at least presenting a valid government ID” was the reply. I tried arguing, but she switched into a full-on flat-affect blankly-hostile bureaucrat face. “I’m sorry, I can’t help that.”
It was only when I threatened to start crying on the spot that she fetched her manager. The manager at least smiled at me, and started typing into the computer terminal. Well, evidently the phone agent who had merged the passes incorrectly, and undoing the damage was difficult. At one point, four separate agents were gathered around the terminal, pointing, typing, looking confused, typing more, and arguing with one another. I had to return the rail pass I had just received, and then the ticket reservation. Several different passes got printed then torn up, but after fifteen minutes, I finally had passes and tickets to San Antonio. The manager smiled pleasantly, and wished me a good journey.
So I returned home, and decided to put off the rest of the reservations for another day.
(To Be Continued Again…)