Amtrak Guest Rewards

Screen cap of the email mentioned above:

My problem with the new AGR cards is that I worry that the old MBNA crew may now be ensconced in BofA. I got burned by MBNA in the past. That said, the new point structure is better for everyday use, although the old sleeper bargains are gone, at least in the Northeast.

I got a couple of more facts about the transition from Chase. Their old AGR card will stop accumulating AGR points at the end of September. Their replacement card won't be sent till November. In the meantime, the old card will still be usable, just won't get AGR points.
I am, as I said in a previous post, leery of a BofA credit card. An alternative may be to get a Chase Sapphire Preferred card. This card is free the first year, $95 thereafter, but you get a ton of points for signing up. You can, they say, transfer the points you earn to any of several reward programs, including Amtrak AGR. This is what their website says, but if you plan to go this route of course you should call them up and make sure AGR is still on the list. It looks like you can get several hundred dollars worth of points when signing up and spending some money, etc in the first few months.I am also told that if you cancel the card at any time you get to keep the points you have transferred to a rewards program. Once again if you plan to get this card, double check the rules with Chase.

JoeG wrote:I got a couple of more facts about the transition from Chase. Their old AGR card will stop accumulating AGR points at the end of September. Their replacement card won't be sent till November. In the meantime, the old card will still be usable, just won't get AGR points.

Are you sure it won't be sent till November? I've already signed up for the BoA AGR card. I already have a different BOA card that I use and my AGR card is already listed as one of my open accounts with BOA when I sign in online. I haven't receive the card yet though, but I just signed up for it earlier this week.

i was talking about the replacement card Chase is sending to replace the AGR card. It is not an AGR card. I believe you are referring to a BofA AGR card.

You are spot on. Thanks for straightening me out!

My new BOA AGR card does not show by AGR number embossed on the bottom as my old
Chase card did. Is that a problem?

My new BOA AGR "Worldcard" arrived in the mail yesterday. It does have my AGR number in the lower left area. I suggest you contact the bank.

I called AGR and they said it didn't matter. They show by old GR number with the new card.

JoeG wrote:i was talking about the replacement card Chase is sending to replace the AGR card. It is not an AGR card. I believe you are referring to a BofA AGR card.

A Chase agent told me today that they have mailed the new card today (Oct 1) and I should have it in 5 days.

The thing I don't like about the new system for redeeming points is that I don't know how many points a trip will require until I have a travel plan.

I've used points on short notice to travel to a funeral, for example, but for a lot of optional trips I knew how many points I had to save up, and then I could plan a trip.

Now I won't know whether I have enough points until I'm ready to make a reservation.

For example, my son in Vermont is engaged but hasn't set a wedding date yet. Under the current system, I knew I needed to save up 56,000 points for seven of us in Virginia to make round trips to Vermont. I'm almost there. But now I have no idea how many points I'll need until the wedding date is set and I look into reservations.

So I'll try to save up extra points and not make any other trips with points before the wedding, because I might need all the points I can get in order to make the trip to Vermont.

I'd rather have some fixed prices in terms of points, or an upper limit on how much a trip will require.

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal had an interesting Middle Seat article regarding the "payback" of the various hotel rewards plans:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/hotel-rewar ... 1445407202" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Fair Use:

The many travelers who have never bothered to play in hotel loyalty programs should take note. Marriott Rewards returned an average 9.4% from every dollar spent on hotel rooms when redeemed for reward stays later, a hefty bonus for travelers. That meant if you spent $100 at Marriott, on average you got back $9.40 in free rooms, the study found.

Starwood’s SPG, the loyalty program of Sheraton, Westin and other brands, paid back 6.1% on average. IHG Rewards, which includes InterContinental and Holiday Inn, and Hilton HHonors were close to Marriott’s payout, at 8.6% and 8.9%, respectively. Starwood’s program, however, surpassed its rivals in its payback for credit-card loyalty points.

I must say I'm surprised by this article's findings. I simply "can't be bothered" with the airline's and "fly on a Blue Moon" requirements, as well as their (this IS real life) routings such as ORD-MSN-SUX-DEN/DEN-RNO where obviously the travelers simply wanted ORD-RNO. This year, my United points - and I had about 20K of them having flown overseas - went to Wounded Warriors. I belong to the United plan only because I do most of my flying on them (real lot; four trips this year) and it makes it easier to book a flight.

Hotels have always seemed straight forward to me; you either have enough, or you don't! But I have noticed, along with the article, that IHG has become more stingy, for hotels that always used to be 10K are now 15K a night. Marriott, I find, remains generous, for on a trip to Fredericksburg that I had to cancel account illness within my host's family and otherwise would have been on right now, Marriott would have allowed two nights at their TownePlace brand for 20K.

With all of this as preamble for those who are in the plan, how liberal is Amtrak Guest Rewards? It seems like there are a lot here who ride about in Sleepers compliments of the plan. Since I joined the plan, just as I did United's, to expedite the on-line booking process (and I guess to "be one of the boys" around here), and have never redeemed any of my some 15K (if AGR offered a charity for donations, they'd be gone), what do those around here, especially those also in airline and hotel plans, think of AGR generosity, or lack thereof?

Gilbert B Norman wrote:...With all of this as preamble for those who are in the plan, how liberal is Amtrak Guest Rewards?

Under the present Guest Rewards zone redemption plan the value of the plan depends on:
Your valuation of the cost of acquiring your points,
The points needed for the redemption, and
The currently quoted price of your trip.

In addition to the points acquired by riding Amtrak, they can also be acquired for free, or as a trade-off against, say, a 2% cash-back credit card scheme,or they can be bought for a price. If you care to do the arithmetic you might save a bundle, but the calculation can't be reduced to a percentage for comparison.

Under the new AGR plan, the redemption side becomes simpler; a point is worth $0.028986 against the fare-du-jour. If you're only looking at points acquired by paying a fare and riding Amtrak, that's a bit less than 6%.

The old point system provided big bargains if redeemed for expensive sleeper space since a 2 zone roomette was 20,000 points. Seems like points normally cost a penny apiece to acquire, although you could do better.But northease coach points cost 4,000 points per trip, which didnt usually pay for many trips. The new system may be fairer although it seems to eliminate the sleeper bargains. it looks like it pay better for ordinary coach trips.

I used the points estimator on the Guest Rewards website for a hypothetical trip from Virginia to Vermont in June. I couldn't just name a trip and get an estimate; I had to go to the reservations page and get a price, which was $95 per person one way, which translated to somewhere under 4,000 points. That looks OK to me.

Getting the credit card was not smooth, though. I applied around the end of September, and a few days later I went to the Bank of America website to check the application status, and it said it had no record of the application. I called the customer service number, and a guy who didn't speak English that well couldn't find the application either. He said to call back in a month if I didn't get anything in the mail. Then in mid-October I got an email from Guest Rewards saying the card was on the way. And then last Tuesday I got an email from Bank of America saying the card had been mailed Monday, and the card arrived later in the week. I'm not concerned that it took three weeks, just that Bank of America, at the same time it was processing my application, couldn't confirm that I had made an application. I hope things will go smoother now.