Heading to Washington DC

All set to head to DC by train on the Amtrak Acela service. Nice and quick, leaves from the center of Manhattan - and trains are far more reliable than planes. Right? WRONG!

Happily seated waiting after eating down a cheeky chicken burger for lunch, with 10 mins to go till the train is supposed to leave it is cancelled. No announcement, nothing. The board just updates from "On time" to "Cancelled". Huh? What happened? Did the driver just not show up?

So, off to the guy at the Customer Service desk (I was the first there as there had been no announcement and I just happened to notice the board first). Yes, it is cancelled - you can ride on the normal suburban service instead which only leaves 5 minutes later. Sounds ok - except it stops at every stop, and runs far slower than the Acela trains, so it gets into DC almost an hour later. Yes, I have a meeting in DC, and no I am not going to make it now!

Also, there is a little matter of the fare. Acela tickets are $146, suburban trains are only $60. Hmm, well, they hadn't thought about that yet. I had 10 minutes till the train left - so a little complaining was definitely in order.

After invoking everything I could think of from misleading conduct to the UN law of the sea, the customer service rep finally broke down and offered me a refund (either that, or he couldn't understand my accent). I need to call in later this week.

Hilariously, after he broke down and offered me a refund, about 200 other people who had finally noticed that their train was cancelled and stormed into the customer service center. The agent was already defeated and offered all and sundry refunds.

So now I am sitting on the suburban train to Washington, watching the minutes slowly tick by. To add insult to injury - an Acela train has just hurtled past towards Washington DC. There were almost no passengers getting on at New Jersey or Philadelphia, so I am guessing they did fix the Acela train after all!

It is kind of pretty though - it just started snowing! :)

Dinner tonight is at the Montana Grill in Arlington. Should be fun.

Tomorrow I am participating in a planning meeting in the Washington office and then heading back late tomorrow night for a Taco dinner! :)