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An unfortunate letter I had to write to Amtrak. Please reply with any feedback.
Dear Sirs,
In Regards to Complaint#XXXXX I am very disappointed with the decision that the Customer Service Rep who told me that you cannot refund me or give me a ticket voucher for my experiences.Let me make it clear that I would ideally like a trip with a sleeper for roundtrip travel a voucher or a refund for the inconvieneces that I encountered.
First of all on Train 3 I was seated on the lower lever and someone smoked in the restroom. I have a severe allergy to tobacco and felt sick during the night and the next day. If you instill a non-smoking policy and have smoke stops then why can't you install a smoke detector for this instance. To say nonetheless I was light-headed throughout the day. I told the conductor and she guaranteed me that you could issue a voucher.
On train 14 there was an incident that I witnessed from the diner car around 7 PM where a drunk man threatened to kill everyone on the train. He had 8 bottles of beer and you still allowed him on the train and you sold him the alcohol. This is beyond belief that you would let someone get so belligerent. Your staff did not have authority to handcuff him which would happen on the airplane. He made my trip one of the worse experiences I had to date. This alone should grant me a full refund of my trip. In the post 9-11 I was scared to death with this threat. The conductor said for me to contact you. Not only that my train arrived at 10:00 into San Jose because of the incident.
Another incident on the train is the Diner Car Steward gave me two bills for more that I would have paid. On the Train 4 I would have been charged $9 for an omlette when I ordered the French Toast. And on the Starlight I ordered the Special at $12.50 and he wanted to charge me $17.5. This is fraud and if I didn't catch the mistake I would have paid more. I want you to make sure I was charged accordingly.
If you do not offer me a refund/voucger you can be sure I will post my experiences on Trainweb.org a website that talks about rail travel. You can be sure Amtrak won't be having my business unless a restitution is made. I will go as far as to cancel all the charges on my credit card from this trip if this is the only way to make ends meet.
Going to Lamy I accidently called my dining car server by a different name and was threatened by the head of the diner car that I would not be served if I called her a different name. I merrily got her confused with my coach car attendent.
Please pass this email to the President and the Head of Operations.
I hate to sever my relations with Amtrak as I am a rail fan.
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