Absolutely. Is a $25 in excess bag fees worth losing this customer over? Heck no! Which is why the rep gave a voucher (sure, I'd prefer $25 charge reversed, but it's not like the DM wouldn't be able to use it right way given how much a DM flies)...

However, there are benefits to splitting your PNR - you can get upgraded at your window and not have to worry about the "baggage" (tongue-in-cheek to refer to wife and kids ) dragging you down, if you don't mind being separated.

Also, if the PNR is different, you could technically be flying different routes, so how would the system automatically give you an exemption for this? I guess if you were on the same flights, it could somehow figure it out, but I don't see anything in Delta.com that would allow me to specify who my spouse/children are, nor would I necessarily want it to do that...

So, I agree that the system did what it was supposed to do - charge the extra bag fee.

Given that the upgrade on award ticket rule isn't quite in place yet, there's technically "no harm, no foul" to extend the bennies to the family, but once it does -- would you prefer that some other medallion splits his/her PNR to get an upgrade, then tries to game the system to get out of paying a bag fee (ignoring whether or not you think the fee is reasonable or not - that's not at issue here)?

That doesn't seem fair to the rest of us that agreed to play by the rules.

With these sort of considerations, I feel that at the airport, the agent (not the skycap) should've used his/her own judgment, identified that splitting the PNR gave no discernible (unless it does, but we the fliers don't have back-end knowledge) benefit in this situation, and should've linked the two PNRs to extend the benefits to the rest of the family.

If joining the PNR is impossible, waiving the $25 fee should be possible, since the fee was paid on a "technicality".

Failing that, yes a refund is reasonable, too. But it's certainly not the most that Delta can or should have done from an initial service recovery standpoint, but it's certainly better than the letter-of-the-rules stipulate they must do.

So, yeah, DL had an initial miss-step above, but I don't see any particular reason to vilify the company. There are stated rules, and they weren't followed. In this case, there would've been no harm to "fix" the situation, but in others, it could give an unfair advantage, so at some point a line has to be drawn.