Originally Posted by Seattlite

Long story short, Delta failed to add me to an upgrade list SEA-JFK (computer supposedly rolls elites onto the list six hours before departure) and GA clears at gate only. Delta eventually compensated me fully for the mixup and then some.

Although I would have cleared, the GA had already cleared a bunch of other folks in front of me by the time I was able to get my name added back to the list and there were no seats left. Ended up in seat 40B. That's the furthest back in any airplane I've sat in years and let me tell you it's awful. I feel for everyone that gets trapped in an awful seat on transcontinental flights with the relatively craptastic 757 aircraft.

The computer didn't do its job and then Delta failed to compensate me correctly. They initially flung 7,500 miles my way. When that didn't do the job, I attempted to escalate and a customer service (Diamond desk supervisor) got me a bulkhead seat on a MSP-SEA segment heading back. I wanted more and he promised that his manager would call me back. That never happened.

I escalated further and finally spoke with a customer care supervisor who said the biggest weapon in her arsenal was a $200 voucher. It was that or nothing so I accepted it, but I also wrote back my thoughts to Delta once again. I wrote back especially because those first class seats went for $500 upgrade "sale" two hours before the flight. My thinking is that I had missed out somehow on the $300 difference in value between if that what Delta believes those seats are actually worth in an attempt to sell instead of provide gratis.

My case was further escalated (to my complete amazement) and Delta has made the situation whole. They refunded the ticket price difference I'd paid to change my flight the night before (resulting in an ungainly M-class gouge fare) and they cleared a global upgrade I had pending and issued me an additional global upgrade certificate good for another year.

I write all this because at the beginning, of course, Delta reps told me that nobody at Delta has the power to upgrade me at will, refund at will, etc. I was even told "the computer controls everything." hahaha There are humans behind those terminals after all and of course there are people that can do this and they apparently will do so given the combination of right circumstances/service failuers and elite member perseverance.

Certainly this situation is out of the norm, but it goes to show that Delta will stand behind their customers eventually. I give Delta a thumbs up for this effort, but my criticism is that it was so difficult to convince representatives of the actual degree of the problem and lack of reasonable solution. In-kind gestures without a lot of hubub would go a long way to resolve these types of service failures in the future.

In summary, thanks Delta for making this right. You went above and beyond, but it took a lot of effort on my part to make you see the error of your ways.