Originally Posted by
BenA
No, I read it all the way through. As I mentioned in my post, she claims agents will have a measure of discretion:
But the
official policy posted on Delta.com makes no mention of this flexibility, and 'extenuating circumstances' means it would be up to me to convince an agent to make an exception to the policy. I expect that, given the fantastic Chisholm agents, I could probably find someone to do it for me - but my point is simply that it's an added measure of stress that isn't there today, when award changes are officially permitted.
Great move DL. So what do you think is going to happen, people will flood the phone lines until someone cancels. Just simply make it a friendly policy otherwise you'll have angry customers meet unfriendly agent, guess what that recipe makes.
Originally Posted by
deltagoldflyer
Yes we are all "plugged in" here at FT and know about this. But think about this; most of the REALLY BIG spenders have no idea this has become
LAW!
Think what will happen when the next wave finds out what DL has done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXAGo...layer_embedded
I think the video says it all!
I've been calling the Loyalty/Benevolence crap since that commercial came out.
Originally Posted by
mtkeller
Just got my "response" from Jeff. What a laugh. My favorite excerpts:
"With over 1 million award seats cancelled or changed within 72 hours of departure (not including same-day standby and same-day confirmed) and over 400,000 of those tickets cancelled post-departure (no-shows), we needed to make this policy change."
So this change is to deal with 600K award
seats (and remember, most award
bookings are not non-stop, so that's really more like 200K to 300K award bookings), since the other 400K were taken care of with July's change of preventing redeposit after departure. Seems like a pretty drastic change to solve a very minor problem.
With regard to the inflexibility in the event of emergencies:
"
Although not a commitment, I believe our Reservations and Customer Care staff will handle these situations on a case-by-case basis".
Wow, Jeff, can't even commit to having customer service handle emergencies on a case-by-case basis? I wouldn't expect a commitment to resolve them all to the customer's satisfaction, but at least committing to handling exceptional circumstances on a case-by-case basis would be reasonable.
Yeah, I got the same response. Funny, word for word. Wonder if he really is writing (at least copying and pasting) or some poor bloke is being paid $6/hr as part of his internship to do this. Probably learning more about CS than Jeff is if you ask me.
to the response, no consideration. Seems like case closed.
He writes in the end how tough it was a decision. As if he was doing it for us.
Originally Posted by
StayingHomeIsBetter
Two weeks ago, we were told:
"... Last year, our planes departed with more than 400,000 empty seats because customers had Award Tickets booked but did not physically fly in those seats. This change to our redeposit policy will make those seats available to other members and ultimately increase our Award Ticket availability."
Now we hear:
"...we determined that there are more than 1,000,000 award seats that were going unused at the 72 hour mark prior to departure. That is 3 days in which those seats could otherwise be sold or used for other SkyMiles members who truly intend to sit in the seat and travel. "
Unless both "facts" were plucked out of thin air (a very real possibility). it would seem that 60% of the seats available at T-72 hours are sold before flight time. 60% are "otherwise ... sold or used."
So, the picture is no more bleak than it was two weeks ago... 400,000 allegedly empty seats per year... or 0.5 seats per flight (assuming 65,000 flights per month).
One seat on every other flight...
I have learned to be suspicious when a DL exec's lips start moving.
I'd have to see an independent audit of the numbers before I believe this.
BTW... I have to assume that our meek acceptance of the first restriction two weeks ago emboldened them to implement the second, more severe restriction.
What comes next if we roll over on this one?
I have said a few times here and still believe, they count all the empty award seats going out in that 1M. But I'm sure they count all the unredeemed high awards. Seriously, who's going to redeem an award for 500K Skypesos? I don't care if it puts me in some lie flat to Timbuktu, I am not redeeming that.
Originally Posted by
avidflyer
Delta has already spoke on the issue and it stands as is: "There will be no further discussion". The reality is you are giving them way too much credit...this was not done to fix a problem..there are a million ways (you suggest one of them) to do that and to suggest that the folks at DL are not smart enough to think of them is really really naive. This was done because too many people are getting at the "hidden" Low availability otherwise they would have done it differently.
+1, because there was no problem except DL left open an opportunity to take more miles away.
Originally Posted by
deltagoldflyer
What is the consensus on who is doing the best status matches now? CO, UA, AA? I think we should form a group and offer to go together (as the corporate discount thread is trying to do).