<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by misstree:
How is Delta passing on the cost?? - they are certainly not putting a gun to the head of any travel agent to use them. I hardly think DL's or any other airlines costs would raise by dumping the commissions they pay to travel agents - on the contrary they are saving multi-millions of dollars and gain passengers directly by telephones or websites.[/B]</font>
misstree:
With all due respect, do you understand what it means to "pass on the cost" of X to another party Y?
If DL handles the booking of a given reservation, it must pay either for the web site to do so (small cost I grant you), OR the agents needed to handle these calls. I "raised" the issue of which is cheaper for DL? Paying X$ to a TA to have this done, or having its own staff do this, especially over the phone.
How much time on the phone does an agent spend to book a typical ticket? Don't give me one of those bs 30-seconds answers -- a typical 4-segment (except for those living in hubs). Look up flights, check fare rules, offer customer alternatives, assign seats, get cc info, etc... 5 minutes? 10 minutes? What is then the total cost, including wages, non-wage costs, office space, etc... Whatever it is, it's more than 0, and these expenses must be covered by whomever sells the ticket to the customer. If DL tells TA's: thanks for doing this money saving job for us, in return for which you get squat, then they are passing on the cost. As Denis Leary once said: Simple Little Equation!
The idea of "putting a gun" to someone's head is irrelevant and shows a total lack of understanding of anything that has been written above, including pshuang's debunking of your change fee explanation.