I need to vent. I have been a Diamond member since the inception of the program, and I cannot remember ever facing this amount of frustration with Delta. I am trying to purchase a Delta One fare for myself on a TATL itinerary and purchase a Premium Select fare for my wife which will be upgraded with a GUC. I spent ~ 1 hour online searching for upgrade space for her, greatly complicated by the fact that if I do XXX-ATL-CDG-YYY it will not show the upgrade availability in many cases on ATL-CDG, but if I just search ATL-CDG it will. So I need to look at possible itineraries XXX-DTW-CDG-YYY, XXX-JFK-CDG-YYY, XXX-ATL-AMS-YYY, etc. I found an itinerary that works without having an absurd Delta One fare (> $8k), and then spent 2 and a half hours on the phone with Delta (and this does not include the 5 minutes holding to speak with an agent initially). We go through ticketing both me and my wife, and then they say that the TATL return (CDG-DTW) can only be waitlisted for my wife, as there is no availability. I say that is crazy, the web site shows otherwise:
Here is the pop-up window if you click on "Delta One available..."
The first agent says that he cannot explain the discrepancy between what he sees (no upgrade availability) and what I see, and would I like to talk with another associate. I say yes, and go through the same process. She also ends up saying that she cannot upgrade my wife, and I insist that she talk to a supervisor. She goes back and forth between me and the supervisor, asks me to email them the screenshots above, and then says that since the web shows availability, the supervisor should be able to book this and honor that. Ultimately, she comes back and says that they will not do it, but would I like to speak with the supervisor. I talk with the supervisor who remains adamant that they can do nothing. I thought in the past that having status meant that you could avoid all of this and that Delta would honor what their web site shows. That appears to no longer be the case. It is also clear that the GUCs are worthless even if I am willing to pay $2,800 for a PS fare.