Business Class Shorthauling (Is Stupid and Rude)

[Tadman]

So this week I'm off to Detroit. I'm on 350 as we speak in business class, which is okay but the little cabin is nice and quiet and that's a huge plus. Last week I did CHI-STL and back. Down in business class, back in coach. Coach seats are fine, but there are no armrests and it's a lot noisier.

Anyway, I'm trying to reserve my tickets from Detroit back to Chicago in a few days. I can ride business Detroit-New Buffalo, but not all the way to Chicago. In other words, some genius at Amtrak has decided it's ok to sell $30 business class tickets literally in commuter territory when I'm trying to buy a $100+ ticket to Chicago. Scuse me? This makes no sense from a business management perspective or a convenience perspective.

Also, buying business class for that short of a ride is kind of dumb. It's literally commuter territory, with South Shore trains departing ten minutes away. If I'm just going New Buffalo-Chicago, I ride the South Shore as it's far more reliable. I rarely ride Amtrak and never book business class on that hop.

[ExCon90]

I think it used to be automatic, even in coach on all-reserved trains, not to sell shorthaul space until perhaps the day of departure--they did that back in the days of pencil-and-paper diagrams. Are we at the point where there is no more institutional memory, and everything is new and wonderful to the current employees?

[David Benton]

Could be a connection to a long distance train , which they would probably allow, especially if sleeper.

[mtuandrew]

Also depends on what you means by short-haul. Maybe Amtrak’s definition of short-haul is Michigan City to Chicago, not New Buffalo to Chicago?

[bratkinson]

In a 'walk up' business, where one never knows in advance who's coming and when, the only guidelines are using historical information for the business.

Take McDonalds. They know, in a typical day (I'm making up numbers), they'll sell 1000 hamburgers, 1500 cheeseburgers, 1000 Big Macs and 1000 Quarter pounders. But the day before Thanksgiving, they'll sell 50% more of each, so they order more supplies in advance. And on 3 day holiday weekends like Labor Day, they have to lay in an extra days' supplies as there are no deliveries that Monday. Ordering supplies is always a 'gamble' that they don't order too much (spoilage) or too little. If it happens there's a parade or special event nearby on some particular day, there's chance they'll run out of hamburgers, or Big Macs. 55 years ago, working at Burger King, we ran out of Whoppers one evening while I was working there.

What has that to do with Amtrak? Perhaps they know from historical data that there's almost always seats available from New Buffalo to Chicago on departure day. So they sell 80% of that number of open seats for 'commuters'. It's that simple. It just happened that when you wanted to book from Detroit, maybe that day has a family of 5 boarding at New Buffalo. I've seen exactly that happen on a split cafe/18-seat BC car on the Vermonter about a year ago. All of a sudden, BOOM, all the seats are gone. Perhaps if you made your reservation a couple days earlier, you'd have gotten a DET-CHI business class seat and the family had to split up. It all comes down to 'gambling', like any airline, with over booking and how many no-shows are likely to occur. Or, in the OPs situation, how long do they hold seats for longer distance passengers and risk having empty seats DET-CHI? It all comes down to revenue maximization algorithms.

For what it's worth, a couple of months ago, on a different forum, one poster was extremely upset that when he wanted to use an upgrade coupon to upgrade to Acela First Class on a particular train, there weren't any reserved seats available WAS->BOS. There was likely a seat WAS-NYP, but that seat was filled out of NYP-BOS, but another seat was open out of NYP. Knowing that upgrade coupons can be used either 12 or 48 hours prior to departure, he/she likely hit a 'busy' day or waited until only a couple hours before departure to call and upgrade. It's no different than sleeping car reservations. If one waits too long to book a 'long haul', say CHI->SEA, there won't be any 'through' rooms available. There's another thread in a different forum about that one. For roomettes, I've booked end-to-end 'short haul' more than once and simply changed roomettes enroute.

As was learned in 1st grade, give or take...the early bird gets the worm.