We got to 30th Street station at 9:20am for a 9:23am train to New York.  Admittedly, we were cutting it very close.  I wasn’t worried however because every single time I’ve taken an Amtrak train, a 9:23 train means, they let you descend to the tracks where the trains come in, at 9:23, the train will arrive at 9:26 and you will leave by 9:30.  So because of these previous experiences we chose to grab breakfast from Dunkin Donuts.  This got us to the tracks as 9:23 turned to 9:24.  As we approached the stairwell, the Amtrak uniformed gentleman was roping off the stairwell.  I asked if the train and left and he very rudely told me that it had, as if I’m the asshole.  So now I’m in a bad mood about this. Apparently this train had left 30 seconds ago and the stairwell guy rude about it.

There was no final boarding call over the Public Address system that one can barely understand anyway.  The next train was at 10:20am so I had to wait another hour.  What made the whole situation infuriating is that Amtrak is NEVER on time.  Which leads me to the reason I’m writing this.  One way to truly upset your customers is to set expectations and then not deliver.  In this case, it was setting the expectation that the train is always late making an on time departure an inconvenience.

Now you might say: “Jeff you should’ve gotten there on time.”  I agree, but wait, the story isn’t over.  So, I was late and the train left on time, fine.  That’s what we all would expect and hope for is a train to leave on time.  So I went to the ticket window and accepted my fate, I would take the 10:20 and I would be an hour late.  The woman at the ticket window was incredibly nice and had me exchange my ticket for the 9:23 train for the 9:20, that was running 40 minutes late.  She said that would probably leave around 9:50,  I was excited, the nice woman made up for the rude guy standing at the top of the stairwell AND she offered me an option that would get me into NY 30 minutes late instead of an hour.  The funny part is the option she gave me was for a train that was supposed to have left 3 minutes before the one that left me behind.

So there are 3 trains on the board all going to NY.

  1. A 9:20 train, running 40 minutes late until it changed to 50 minutes late and then ultimately 1 hour late.
  2. a 10:20, running 10 minutes late.
  3. and a 10:30 running “on time.”

So now we have 3 trains, all supposedly leaving from 10:20am – 10:30am.  We got to go down the stairwell to our train at 10:20am, the train didn’t show up until 10:30am and we didn’t move an inch until 10:37am.

Mind you, we pay upwards of $45 EACH WAY to have this wonderful experience.  Either I get there early and wait or get there too close to the posted departure time and miraculously it leaves on time, it’s a no win.  The people taking the 9:20am and the 9:23am had very different experiences.

The 9:23am crowd is leaving at 10:37am while the 9:23am crowd left precisely at 9:23am.

So what should my expectations be next time?

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