Beta Delta

I just got off the phone with Delta’s customer service and am feeling extraordinarily irked.

In some ways I can’t believe my own silliness. Here for nearly two months now, I’ve been thinking I had a return flight at on the day I agreed to on purchase, when in fact its been another all along. They did sent me a confirmation with that wrong date on it, and I was supposed to call them back and have it corrected within 24 hours. But the confirmation didn’t display in thunderbird, and I wondered why they’d sent me a blank email, till I tried forwarding it to our accountant and the text magically appeared. My bad is that I -did- click forward and even copied and pasted that forwarded info to one other person. I didn’t take time to re-read the dates and times in that forwarded email because I assumed they were correct. Silly me!

Delta assumes that they were correct, too, and that there is NO WAY their site could have made such a horrendous mistake… therefore it was me who decided it was OK to leave mid-luncheon, and now I must pay for my foolishness.

I’m usually fairly mellow. Maybe it’s the stress of suddenly realizing I’m supposed to fly out WHILE I’m hosting a luncheon with a group of top designers around the world. Or maybe it’s that it’s the middle of the night. Or… maybe what set me off was the pathetically bad voice recognition program on the other end of the phone saying “If you want to discuss your existing reservation, say, ‘Discuss my existing reservation.'” then “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.” Come on, “discuss my existing reservation” when it can’t even make out the difference between yes and no?

Or maybe its that I don’t like being jerked around.

Still, at wits end, and having already gone up the ranks from the automated phone system to some script-reading Indian to the customer service supervisor in Salt Lake, I had little choice but to be swindled. Luckily I wasn’t quite so trusting this time, and went on their site where I discovered I could buy a whole NEW ticket for $400 — not the $687 or so total they were asking for now. I asked her to explain. Her response was something like “Well, yes we do have a cheaper flight that morning but I Thought you wanted the one you purchased the first time.” Awesome customer service there, Delta.

Anyway so I forked out the money and vowed to myself I will always pick ANY airline over Delta. Which meant I’d have to find something to do with the skymiles I’d just earned. But clicking around on their site I’m finding that its quite half-baked! Half of the skymiles spending links don’t even work. And here I’m supposed to believe that this wrong-day reservation could not possibly be due to some bug in their system?

So what do I do with the skymiles I have no desire to use? I’m hoping there’s a way to donate them to the next poor soul Delta decides to torture. Post your Delta horror story here, and how my measly 1300 miles might help.

In the meantime, if you’re looking to buy tickets, my recommendation? Go Jet Blue.