Monday, November 10, 2014

The Saga of Sold Out Seats: Somebody should stop selling sausage

 

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We get a kick out of the exuberant gent shown in the Downeaster promo above.  He looks like a cross between the guy who just found out Cialis daily will improve his romantic life, and the one who dug until he found out about Eliquis, a “prescription blood thinner used to reduce the risk of stroke and blood clots in people who have atrial fibrillation (AFib), a type of irregular heartbeat, not caused by a heart valve problem.”  Oh yeah….”for three reasons.”

Either that, or he just found out that the NNEPRA pronouncements about difficulty buying Downeaster tickets to and from Brunswick because seats are ‘sold out farther down the line’ is so much Brunswick Sausage.

Continuing with our own investigation into those claims, which have proven totally bogus in our last two ‘stress tests’ on the ticket purchasing system, we today looked into buying tickets both Northbound and Southbound between Boston and Brunswick, this time, for today, the 10th, through Sunday, November 23rd.

As before, we tried buying 8 adult seats, the most the reservation page will allow with a single transaction.  Guess what.  We found out just what we did before: we could buy the requested 8 seats on all “trips”, except, obviously, those that are cancelled.  Some of the trips are hybrids, as before, involving a bus segment and a train segment.

We did come across a curious block of trains that show as ‘sold out’ in the later days of this time span.  Skeptics that we are, we’re kind of suspicious that authorities have noticed our reporting on the subject, and are taking to calling cancelled connections ‘sold out’ because it looks better.

                

But don’t worry; we’ll look into this further.  It’s how we amuse ourselves and inform you.

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