Originally Posted by
FlyBitcoin
I think DL has made it very clear where it draws the lines on customer value. That is the dividing lines between SM, GM, PM, and DM. If they cared about sub-groups of value, then they would create more categories.
Originally Posted by
hotturnip
DL has about a zillion elites of different types. I doubt they really keep track of exactly how each one of them has earned his/her status, and it's even less likely that they're somehow reacting to these subtle differences in the way members have earned status.
So I agree that Delta probably doesn't care (for example) that one person earned status via the MQD waiver whereas another accrued MQDs the traditional way. But I think it's naive to think that Delta doesn't use private measures / categorizations to differentiate customer value. We already know that they care about things like whether someone has the credit card and whether they booked via a corporate account because these factors are built into upgrade priority rules. In addition, frontline staff have access to information like how many change fee waivers a member has gotten in the past and there's also a flag for customers who are notorious complainers to prevent them from abusing Delta by trying to get unwarranted compensation.