lamprey

I had a 70,000 point award ticket for business/first from ACC to DCA via JFK a few months ago. There was a fluke ice storm after I landed in JFK and after three consecutive re-bookings and cancellations, I was stranded. The Skyclub agent advised me that I'd be better off buying my own ticket on Amtrak and requesting a refund for taxes and miles for the JFK-DCA segment. I did take Amtrak to get in that night and emailed DL multiple times to get a refund. The money department quickly gave me my 20-some bucks back in taxes, but have heard zero back from the Skymiles people about getting any of my miles back.

A JFK-DCA award ticket in F is 25,000+ points -- I'll admit this is quite a stretch because distance-wise it was a small fraction of the entire trip. Is this even worth my time, or am I going to spend hours writing and calling (it's clear they aren't eager to get back to me) just to possibly get a few thousand points back?

MSPeconomist

You won't get 25,000 miles back because the miles required from ACC to DCA is the same as the miles required from ACC to JFK at the same "award level" on the charts that were formerly posted on delta.dumb. It could be a bit more complicated because of married segment award availability, but you flew ACC to JFK in the fare class (and subclass) that was originally booked, so that the cancellation of your later flight would have changed your award ticket on the flight that was taken from medium to low for example.

Often1

I think that I would reframe the request as a request for some customer service gesture, not for a refund or compensation.

The fare here is the same. Thus, the refund is zero miles. On the other hand, the flight was cancelled and OP incurred expenses for his NYP-WAS Amtrak ticket.

It would be appropriate for AA to provide some limited number of miles or a small credit to OP for his troubles.

Note that this is exactly what trip interruption coverage provides. OP may want to check whether he can simply obtain the cost of his local transportation to NYP and his Amtrak ticket to WAS.

javabytes

I would think of it more like an involuntary downgrade on an award ticket. If you are downgraded for one segment, the fare would technically be the same (since you are charged the First/Business class rate if any leg in that direction is up front). However they provide you with a refund calculated on the distance of the downgraded portion relative to the distance of the journey. I don't see why the same wouldn't apply here, substituting the unflown portion in for the downgraded portion.

ACC-JFK = 5111 miles
JFK-DCA = 213 miles
Total = 5324 miles

213 / 5324 = 4%
4% of 70,000 = 2,800 miles

Perhaps still not quite the number that OP is looking for. With the cause of the cancellation being WX, I don't see why DL would provide additional compensation as a goodwill gesture. But who knows, they might, and it might be more than this.

Often1

1. Because that's not how DL calculates these reroutes. It may make sense, but it isn't.

2. OTOH, I would expect a customer service gesture of around 5K miles, so that's likely better than the calculations you've used.

ATLawyer

Go to twitter, I've found them infinitely more helpful (and faster) than any other route.

Point of reference--had a shuttle flight cancelled due to weather and was rebooked on the next one. Ended up arriving 2 hours late. The gave me 2k miles with zero grief when I asked. Took about 20 minutes total from initial inquiry to final response.

lamprey

That's good to know. I asked on Twitter and they told me someone from Skymiles will get back to me... We'll see.

But for future reference: are the Contact Delta e-mail people a bunch of automaton bozos? It's clear that the more precisely that I explain and lay out the situation in subsequent emails, the more likely they are to completely ignore what I write and respond with the same canned nonsense about an already-resolved issue or say they'll "re-forward" the matter to a different department.

lamprey

2,800 miles was the correct answer. After the latest 13 days of silence, someone from SM got back to me with a two line email saying someone had, in April, gone in and back-dated the miles refund. I just checked and it was buried separately as "ADJ, FOR IRREGULAR OPERATIONS/SCHEDULE CHANGE." But nobody at DL bothered to inform me in our numerous exchanges, which made me feel kind of like a jerk for continuing to be insistent that nobody was answering my question.

On the bright side, with DL's cut-rate e-mail service team, I'm sure they will pass along those cost savings to me, the customer!

Often1

This was the on-the-nose correct calculation. Not sure what all the folks suggesting that Twitter would somehow change the calculation, were trying to achieve.

javabytes

So you've come around, have you?

plinko83

Sorry, I'm trying to follow this - did you get a 2800 mile "refund?"

lamprey

I'd call it that, though they said that 2,800 miles were added to my account "for the segment not flown. This is the prorated amount due back to you."

DL also previously told me I'd get about $21 in taxes/fees refunded to my Amex, but I checked and that never actually showed up. I'm guessing this is because I had to originally pay in Ghanian Cedis and in my experience Delta has the hardest time working with foreign currencies*. It's really not even worth me going back to reopen this wound.

* As an unrelated tangent, I've listened as several manual reissuing agents had to count the zeros aloud when adding up and double-checking fares and taxes priced in West African Francs for other tickets. I can only imagine the headache: