Originally Posted by
BRRR
[MENTION=12946]Delta[/MENTION] Delta told me I couldn't reserve a miles flight for 24-hours before transferring the Amex miles to Skymiles after I tried both online and with their agent. I tranferred the miles, and the flights were still available for the same points. But I got an error message. Called another agent, and he said their partner China Southern posted fake flights "the flights NEVER existed" on Delta all the time. If true, Delta is defrauding consumers. Delta won't find similar flights for the same miles and refuses to transfer my miles back to Amex. I've called Amex, they refuse to help. I'm a FF and a long time Amex customer. I want my miles back. And I NEVER want to fly Delta again. They intentionally cheated me.
There are a couple issues here:
1) I don't think Delta has ever allowed you to reserve an award flight without having the miles on hand. Other airlines might, but DL doesn't and doesn't advertise otherwise.
2) The partner issue is very common with Chinese airlines and is unfortunately not something Delta can control unless they just stop allowing any partner bookings with mainland airlines at all, which I don't think anyone would want. When you called originally, did you verify the flights were actually available? I would never attempt to book a mainland Chinese partner flight online with DL, always call to verify.
3) Even if Delta was willing to "refund" your miles, they certainly do not have any mechanism to do so. I suppose you can try to plead your case with Amex, but I doubt that will go far. Worth a shot I guess. I suppose you could also call back and escalate it and see if they can actually find you a real CZ flight, but just know that DL cannot control what CZ is reporting. I've been through this a few times with mainland airlines and each time it required a phone call that lasted over an hour.
Sounds like an unfortunate situation but the good news is the miles didn't go to waste, they never expire and you don't have to fly Delta if you don't want to. There are plenty of partner bookings that can be done on DL.com without any issues.