The Delta Airlines Debacle

I received an email from Delta Airline’s customer care coordinator. I had sent them an email that was pretty similar to this post, lamenting the costs I faced when traveling from Boston to Salt Lake City on their airlines (or affiliates). Including the ticket price, unexpected meals, lost salary, etc, we had lost a total of nearly $2,000. For two ONE-WAY tickets. Okay?

I won’t post the entire reply, but snippets:

Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding the service provided while traveling with us. On behalf of everyone at Delta Air Lines, I sincerely apologize for the difficulties you and your family encountered due to the cancellations of our Flight 5717 and Flight 4425, operated by our Delta Connection partner, Mesaba Aviation.

I understand the frustration you experienced when your plans were disrupted due to the cancellation of our flights for mechanical reasons. I am truly sorry your travel was adversely affected. During irregular operations, we try to put you on the first available Delta or Delta Connection flight. Additionally, when our cancellation resulted in an overnight stay, we should have made every effort to provide meal vouchers.

This all sounded promising, right? Because she sounded genuinely apologetic and acknowledged that we should have been provided meal vouchers. Continuing on:

As a gesture of apology for the unpleasant experience you had, I have issued an Electronic Transportation Credit (eTCV) in the amount of $100.00 for you and your husband. The eTCV can be used online at http://www.delta.com or when booking directly through one of our Reservations offices.

My first thought was, “okay, well $100 is better than nothing” but then I was contacted by someone who was on the same flight as us. He received a complete refund on his ticket, $200 voucher, hotel stay, meal vouchers and a $50 Visa gift card.

Now, I’m not trying to be an asshole about this, really, I’m not. I hardly ever complain about poor customer service and never once over an airline (and considering I have over 50,000 miles in frequent flier miles, I fly A LOT). But I am completely pissed off. I don’t know how else to word it. I’m wondering why we were not offered the same, because as I said in the previous paragraph, he was on the exact same flight, had the same exact experience as us. But he was refunded. And had double the voucher value. Not to mention all the other benefits.

After the Dooce, maytag mayhem of yesterday questioning a company’s commitment to their customer service, it really makes me wonder whether companies really care, unless you’re a super celebrity blogger with more than a million following. How many times did I tweet about how much Delta airlines pissed me off? Somewhere in the vicinity of 10-15 tweets. (As a side note, wow, I guess I became pretty obnoxious. Thanks to those of you who didn’t unfollow me!) If I were someone as well-known and influential as Dooce, I probably would have received my own airplane.

From here, I suppose there isn’t really much point in following through with my complaints to Delta. Perhaps, if I had mentioned that I would be blogging my experience, I would have received something more equal to that of our fellow passengers, but really…it shouldn’t matter if I’m a blogger, well-known or unknown. With an audience of over a million or just a handful of readers. Am I thankful for the apology and $100 vouchers? Yes. Do I feel like they made up for our experience? No.

I’m going to see about transferring this tickets to someone else, because quite frankly, I don’t plan on flying with Delta in the near future. I’ve had much better experiences with JetBlue, United Airlines and Southwest (all of which have reimbursed me for much slighter problems that I didn’t even have to bring up).

I’m mostly posting this for your benefit (and as an outlet to vent until Steve gets home from work!), because shitty customer service shouldn’t go unmentioned.