More than two months ago, I helped my parents file a complaint with Delta Airlines. The issues warrant not only a response, but compensation.
Crickets.
Nobody is answering the customer care line. The recorded message there refers you to the web site, which is the same place I uploaded the complaint in early June. The response via Twitter is to initiate yet another chat where they say responses are taking longer than expected and then tell me to call the customer care line.
Here’s the brief background. My parents were heading to Paris on business class tickets on May 30. Due to weather problems, their flight out of Orlando to Minneapolis was going to be severely delayed causing a misconnect.
They found this out during their hour plus drive to the airport and Delta told them to continue to the airport. On the way, they were able to rebook their flights, but only for the next day on a flight that left VERY early in the morning.
They got a hotel room at the airport so they didn’t have to go far at such an early hour.
This is when the real problem started, and the part which warrants the response and appropriate compensation.
As recommended, my parents arrived at the ticket counter to check in almost three hours before their scheduled international flight.
That is where they encountered a check in agent who did not clearly understand France’s rules for COVID vaccination and denied boarding to my vaccinated and boosted parents, saying the date of their booster shot was not recent enough. This is wrong. The only instance when the date mattered was when there is no booster.
Since my parents knew the rules, they asked for a supervisor who, without listening to my parents or reading the rules herself, said the ticket agent had the final say and they could not get on the plane.
The very rude agent said the only solution was to get a pricey COVID test at the airport testing site (which hadn’t opened yet) and take a later flight. He rebooked them then bragged about how many people he had denied boarding to for this very reason.
My parents knew they were right, so they called Delta and someone there agreed and noted the correct policy in their records, but said that wouldn’t guarantee anything.
So armed with information like screenshots from the French Embassy’s web site, the US State Department web site, and Delta’s own web site stating my parents were correct, they went back to the ticket counter.
The only one in the priority lane was the same guy. My parents presented the information they had and suggested he look in their records for the note from the Delta Supervisor in Atlanta.
After taking a look at what my parents showed them and then reading something on his own computer, he proceeded to say he was wrong and gave them boarding passes.
So after one day of weather delays and another unnecessary delay which created a tight connection in New York, my parents finally got on a plane. They lost a day of their vacation and almost lost another.
No instant compensation. No throwing of SkyMiles their way hoping it would make them happy. No e-certs. Nothing but a very insincere sorry.
They encountered a Delta employee who did not know the rules, was unwilling to listen, and basically bragged about how many vacations he had ruined.
Now the inaction makes it worse. Is anyone listening to customers anymore? Any suggestions about what to do next?