Amtrak is cheap
Amtrak is cheap. I know this to be true because that%u2019s what the Amtrak employee at the ticket window told me after I drove 50 miles out of my way to exchange a voucher for tickets after the ticket machine at my local train station printed out 2 of the 4 tickets I had purchased, but not the remaining 2. She said that she got a voucher like mine at least once a week because the ticket kiosks run out of paper to print the tickets and all the kiosks can do is print out a voucher which you can mail to Pennsylvania for a refund, or bring to an Amtrak ticket office to exchange for the tickets. She said that the computer systems need to be updated because the kiosks don%u2019t tell the main Amtrak computer system that the tickets didn%u2019t print, or that the kiosk is out of paper; so when you call Amtrak customer service on the phone after getting a voucher instead of all of your tickets, the customer service rep tells you on the phone from Pennsylvania that according to their computer, all of your tickets were printed.
I spoke with several different people in several different departments at Amtrak in Pennsylvania trying to find out why I had received the voucher and what I should do. One told me to buy my tickets on the train, (I had already bought the tickets - they just didn%u2019t all print, why would I need to buy more tickets?). Another told me to just explain to the conductor that my tickets didn%u2019t all print, and show him the voucher. If he didn%u2019t accept the voucher and I had to buy more tickets, I would get a refund. That%u2019s a solution? Another asked me if I could go 50 plus miles out of my way to a station which had a ticket office, which I ended up doing. Meanwhile, she didn%u2019t offer me a free round trip ticket on the train in order to get to the ticket office - no, that%u2019s on your dime.
Amtrak is cheap. That%u2019s what I was told, and I believe it.
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