I would like to thank my friends in my DMV points & miles meetup group for finding this. If you live in the DMV area and wish to join, send me an email at professorofpoints@gmail.com, and I can get you connected. We meet once every month or two to discuss points and miles (both earning and redeeming), as well as our favorite destinations and cool experiences from around the globe. We also have a group chat where we share lots of great tips, including the entire content of this post. These are some of the smartest points and miles people I know, and they are incredibly kind as well!
If you live in the Northeast USA, I absolutely think that you should pay attention to Amtrak. Just along the Northeast Corridor route alone, you can get between DC & New York City (via Philadelphia) in less than 4 hours, with approximately the same distance between New York City & Boston.
Additionally, if you book enough in advance, you can get quite a lot of value and very cheap fares. The picture below is from about 4 months in advance.
Given that you can get about 2.9 cents or so in value for each Amtrak point, this can be quite a steal.
Amtrak Nixes Award Cancellation Fees
Traditionally, when booking award tickets using Amtrak points (which can be easily earned with the credit card with the coolest design ever), tickets were refundable, but required you forfeit 10% of your points. Changes also required a 10% fee as well.
The above picture was from an archived page dated June 11th.
However, if you go to that same page on Amtrak’s site now, you no longer see this. (This screenshot is accurate as of June 28th.)
I don’t know exactly when Amtrak made this change. However, this is obviously a positive change if you ever may need to use Amtrak points!
It’s a real shame that Amtrak isn’t advertising this anywhere. I checked my email, and I didn’t get any notifications for this change.
Conclusion
It’s a shame that rail in the US really is only useful in the Northeast or as a taxpayer-subsidized way to see the rest of the US. I think we need to be honest about that’s what it’s most useful for (and still look for ways to better use it to help meet climate change goals).
In a customer-friendly move, you can now cancel and change reward tickets with no fee. This is a recent change in the past two weeks, and it will make using Amtrak points much easier!
What do you think about the recent change to Amtrak reward policies? Could you see yourself using this?
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