Originally Posted by
mrboom
I think DM is useless. I have been DM for 11 years. Late last year I gave up on continuing with my Delta loyalty. The constant roll backs of benefits and service at every level is just sad. I used to really enjoy flying Delta and that's after flying 1k at United for 4 years prior.
This year I've split my flights on the three major airlines and had an equally frustrating experience. Quality customer service no longer exists.
United always has a better value for spending miles for flights. Delta has horrible redemption values. The Delta app is the worst. It has become worse over the last two years. If not for the Diamond customer service line, Delta's IT would grind everything to a halt. The DM line might be the only good thing happening, but it wouldn't be necessary if IT new how to code the app.
I flew Delta every week for 11 years. Now I dread traveling. Looking forward to staying home more.
I agree with most of what you're saying here but I don't think any of this is very related to DM specifically. As you pointed out, flying is a bad experience period right now regardless of which (US) airline you're on, and Delta's app being particularly bad (and getting worse by the day, it seems) isn't really connected to status.
Mostly, flying on US airlines is a bad experience for elites right now because the market conditions have made it such that airlines don't really need elites at the moment. There are (still) tons of leisure travelers who (still) aren't very price sensitive and (most importantly) aren't demanding anything in the way of perqs. In this market, airlines honestly would prefer that elites went somewhere else as they're filling the planes regardless and they don't have to give away a bunch of expensive perqs to do it. Until the market changes (which feels like it could be really, really soon) the treatment of elites won't improve.