Amtrak sucks

Couldn’t they at least let me buy my tickets from Amazon so I wouldn’t have to re-enter the credit card information each time?

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s no big deal. It just seems so silly.

9 thoughts on “Amtrak sucks

  1. Is there a more depressing atmosphere than seeing America’s infrastructure on the LIRR. I ride it once a week and it seems like some of the cars, have no power (subject to roving blackouts in the car), no air conditioning and are straight out of Mad Men (I am dead serious the cars look exactly the same besides the duck tape).

    Is the rest of the country also like this?

  2. I feel like a spam bot right now, but you should really use a service like lastpass, 1password, or keypass. They securely store your credit card information so that you can automatically enter it on any site.

  3. I totally agree they need to continue work on their website/payment system.

    In their defense, Amtrak has an impressive on-time rate, fair pricing (especially if you book in advance) and doesn’t hassle customers with crazy fees, ludicrous security measures, etc. I’ll take that for 16 taps on my keyboard any time.

  4. I am so with you. I know this is exactly the sort of thing that makes people paranoid, but I wish EVERY online retailer of every kind would just run transactions through my Amazon account! Kickstarter is very smart to have partnered with Amazon for transactions – it makes me hugely more likely to contribute money to people’s enterprises there.

  5. Yes Claire! It’s so obnoxious. I thought I’d try having the ticket reader read the barcode off my phone and IT COULDN’T DO IT!

  6. Alvin, I admittedly am not a frequent Amtrak user, having ridden a total of 5 times in the past 5 years, but I have to question the impressive “on-time rate”. Here’s (scheduled duration in hours:minutes, hours:minutes late) for each of those rides: (1:40, :25), (0:45, 0), (0:45, 1:10), (6:30, 0:40), (12:30, 1:00)

    The website is horrible, although now that it suggests station codes to you as you enter your destination it is a lot better than it used to be. Even so, I have often gotten the error that I can’t go from Point A to Point B even though both of them have Amtrak service. Then you have to guess another station to try. I’m sure if I rode more I would learn the tricks but I have had an unsatisfying experience every time I have tried to buy a ticket.

    Although many aspects of the suckiness are presumably beyond their control one way or the other, there really is no excuse for having such a poor e-commerce site at this point.

  7. In Switzerland, you can freely download an app (iphone and android) which allows you to buy tickets (without re-entering your credit card information each time), and it also gives you access to timetables, traffic information (delay, road used, etc.). The ticket appears as a qr code on the screen of your smartphone that is scanned by the controling staff.

    However, Switzerand is a little country, with high train density. Plus, trains are one of the most used means of transportation. This surely pleads for investment in such an app… If you want to have a look, just download mobile cff (french) or mobile sbb (german).

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