Amtrak — Derailed Social Media
Last weekend I went down to New York to visit my parents who were visiting the US and I decided to use the train a.k.a. Amtrak… that was the biggest mistake I made. It was a rainy Thursday afternoon and for some strange reason Boston was gridlocked at 4:30pm. I was rushing from school to Back Bay Station, desperate to catch my 5:26pm train, so much so, I grabbed an Uber Black, because the UberX I initially called cancelled and the next one was too far. I left E62 at 4:40pm and it took me 48 minutes to get to Back Bay Station. Unfortunately, for me the train was on-time. Schucks! I missed my train.
I proceeded to the ticket counter and asked the Amtrak employee to switch me to the next train which was boarding in a few minutes. He was rushing and initially had difficulties to work under a time pressured situation. He printed a set of new documents, made me sign something and said I was good to go with my new ticket. I rushed to the platform, asked the conductor if this was the right train to NYC. He scoffed and condescendingly said, “Yes”, as if I asked the stupidest question in the world. Nevertheless, this time I made my train.
Once on the train, I checked my ticket and realized I didn’t have a printed copy for this journey. Maybe I dropped it, maybe the guy at the ticket counter forgot give it to me. When the conductor checked my ticket I explained my situation. He rudely cut me off and told me to call customer service, claiming it’s not his problem. I went online to Amtrak’s website and found out that the guy at the ticket counter had initiated a complete refund for my ticket, where I got charged ~$15 processing fee, instead of changing it. Therefore, I needed to purchase a new ticket. When the conductor came round again and I asked to purchase a new ticket. He went off on a rant, saying he can’t sell tickets and again condescendingly told me, “That is what the reservations department was for!”. Again I must be the most ignorant person in the world for not knowing this, because nowhere else in the world can you buy tickets from the conductor. FYI, that was sarcasm.
I called up the customer service and bought a new ticket, which turned out to be $198. One Hundred and Ninety Eight Dollars! Wow! That’s 4 times more than a regular ticket! That’s even more than a business class ticket that I could have purchased in the Uber! I obviously had no choice and I bought the ticket. So I decided to take to the Twitter-verse and tell Amtrak how I felt. Below is what ensued.
First off, I have to give credit to them, because Amtrak’s response was within a matter of minutes. However, there was no apology, there was no explanation to contact the website and give my details. This was poor “crisis” management. Note, I do not have many followers, so in terms of Amtrak’s risk of this going viral and impacting the business was very low. Regardless, I would never, I say never, not respond to a question. Amtrak basically left me hanging.
Nevertheless, if I was Amtrak, I would have handled this differently. First off, I would have apologized, then I would give a specific number to contact so that I can reach an agent without going through the call center bureaucracy. Then I would brief the agent so they know what they are handling. Hopefully, there would be some waiving of fees or something or rather to make me slightly happier. This was not the case. My return trip was almost as unpleasant as the trip down, but for other reasons. Sigh! But that is another story for another time.,
