siberslava

This is a story on how not to treat your most loyal customers (DM)


In August I purchased a fare on Delta.com for travel from Istanbul to Melbourne, Australia. The itinerary was IST-AMS-CAN-MEL via KLM with codeshare on China Southern. The fare I purchased from the website showed the China Southern legs (AMS-CAN-MEL) as being Business. As my work allows me to travel business I decided to book this fare, even though it would mean having to pay an additional $200 out of my pocket and travel for 15 extra hours due to the routing (Qatar Airways was offering IST-Doha-MEL business class flights for around $3200 at the time, therefore I had to pay the difference with the Delta fare of 2410 euro being slightly more expensive).

Of course I was willing to pay a little more out of pocket and fly longer as I was extremely interested in earning the 35,214 MQMs that the booked
itinerary provided.

So imagine my surprise when I show up at the airport in Istanbul to check in and the check-in desk of KLM tells me that I have booked an economy fare, not business. I showed them my confirmation page that I had printed out that clearly showed the codeshare flight on China Southern as being in business and that the MQMs being awarded would have corresponded to a business class fare. To their credit they tried extremely hard to resolve the issue, even having the Delta ticket office call Atlanta headquarters. As time was a factor (the plane was departing in two hours) The only options given to me at the were to either fly the itinerary in economy class or to get a refund and book a ticket on another airline of my choice.

To me this was unacceptable. I showed up at the airport with a confirmed fare and Delta and its partners refused to honor it. They had ample time (nearly two months) to catch if this was a mistaken booking or not (I'm not convinced it was a mistaken booking as I had other options as previously
noted to fly business class on other airlines for slightly cheaper at the time of booking). I was never contacted by Delta or its partners to say that the fare was a mistake, so for them not to honor on the day of departure is pretty much unheard of. I was not about to spend 37 hours in transit in economy on China Southern; not in a million years.

The only choice I was then left with was to request a refund of the ticket and try to book with another airline. Luckily there was an Emirates flight due to leave around the same time and they had availability in business class for the itinerary IST-DXB-MEL. I purchased the business class fare for 3200 euro as I had no other alternative at that point as I needed to make it to Melbourne in time to catch a connecting flight to Adelaide. So now Delta has put me in a position where I am another $1200 out of pocket personally because I had an opportunity to book a business class fare back in August with Qatar Airways at $3200. Not only am I out of pocket a total of $1400 because of their screw-up, I am also losing the opportunity to earn the 35214 MQMs my originally booked itinerary would have provided.

I'm a reasonable person, but this is a bit over the line on their part. Delta and its partners should have honored the booked fare (a fax of my confirmation has been sent to Atlanta). The best way to resolve this mix up as far as I am concerned is to of course for Delta to refund my ticket, provide me with a Delta travel voucher worth $1200 (my additional out of pocket expenses) and credit me the 35214 MQMs I should have been earning. I do not believe that this is an unreasonable request on my part.

Having written the above to Delta in an email, this is their response:


Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding your reservations from
Istanbul, Turkey to Melbourne, Australia for travel on October 7th
traveling on KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines). On behalf of everyone at Delta
Air Lines, I sincerely apologize for the booking challenges you
experienced with this reservation.

I am so sorry to learn of the trouble you experienced when booking your
reservation on line, believing you were confirmed in Business Class.
Then to discover at the time of check in that your travel was entirely
in Coach Class of service. I can not imagine your frustration when you
learned of this booking situation at the last minute, just prior to your
travel. Unfortunately, while booking reservations online may prove to
be more cost effective, in cases of complicated itineraries or
international travel, it would always be a good idea to call in to
double reconfirm or get assistance through our reservations office or
online support team.

I apologize for the challenges you encountered with this trip and
consequently will be forwarding your information to our passenger
refunds department. Our passenger refunds team will be reviewing ticket
number to determine the refund due. Once this process is completed, the appropriate adjustment will be processed.


I hope I have been able to resolve your concerns. Again, I
apologize for any inconvenience you experienced. Your support as a
Diamond Medallion member is important to Delta Air Lines, our Connection
Carriers, our Joint Venture team, and our SkyTeam partners. Please know
we will make every attempt to provide future service that earns your
respect and confidence and we look forward to assisting you with your
future travel needs.

Sincerely,


Coordinator, Customer Care
Delta Air Lines


To which I responded:

Dear Delta,

I am quite frankly disappointed in this response. You have done nothing but shift the blame to me for a screw up on the part of your booking system. The itinerary was not complicated. Search parameters on the website were simply round-trip IST-MEL, and this was the itinerary that came up. If I had played around and tried to make some sort of weird multilegged trip then I could see this being an issue; but all I did was put IST and MEL in the search parameters. As this fare was offered and confirmed then you have no choice but to honor it; you did not.

You did not even bother to address my concerns that I am essentially a total of $1400 out of pocket personally because of this screw up and that I am missing out on the MQMs I should have earned. I have faxed a copy of my confirmation to headquarters in Atlanta. I expect this to be resolved in an appropriate manner. Essentially you involuntarily bumped me from a flight the day of, therefore you have little choice but to compensate me.

If there is a number that I can call to talk to someone in a position to actually act upon my request then please pass that along to me; or better yet, please have someone contact soonest.

I look forward to putting this matter behind us.


I then called up Customer Care in Atlanta and after explaining the entire situation again and how the email response was entirely inappropriate all the rep was willing to offer was $250 travel voucher and 15,000 miles. She even made a point to say that they usually do not give out both miles and vouchers as compensation, but that she was doing this for me since I was a Diamond. I said that it was completely unacceptable. She then was willing to offer me a $300 voucher (oh boy, an extra $50 dollars when I am over a $1000 out of pocket). Apparently they really don't value my business. By all rights I should be with the Star alliance since I've been living in Istanbul for eight years, and this is really starting to test my loyalty.

So any suggestions on what I can do to get the compensation I deserve for their colossal screw-up?

rylan

Do you have your receipt from the booking that should've been emailed to you when you booked the flight? You can look in there and find the fare classes and classes of service and it should show what the system actually booked. If you can copy/paste that maybe someone can help decode it or make sure the proper fares were applied.

javabytes

This.

Also, you may want to remove your ticket number from your post.

bpe

In their response
Did you wait to hear from them to see the refund or compensation due?
Not that calling them after that was wrong, but sticking with email might be better as all the records are right there in front of whoever is reading it.

MR_MAMA

What a crock. If you have a confirmation that states business class was purchased then it was purchased-end of story. Were you able to choose business class seats in advance? Were you checked in?

I do believe they owe you a refund of regular ticket and your extra out of pocket for the other ticket, but believe they will give you some MQM doubt MQM since you did not fly them. However, I would not give up on the fight for them as to me they sold you something that you did not receive. I would report them to the DOT.

Good luck, interested to see how this turns out.

siberslava

Yes, I am certainly sticking to the email route so that the communication is logged. It just amazes me that they didn't even address anything in the first response. All they did was blame me for the screw-up. furthermore they even seem to hint that I might not get a full refund of the ticket, even though this is what was offered by Delta manager at the Istanbul airport and by the manager I talked to on the phone at the Salt Lake center.

AKC6

+1. Web site now reads "Flights not operated by Delta Air Lines, a Delta Connection carrier, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines or Air France, will be booked by request only and may take 24 hours to confirm."

rylan

Be sure to keep records of when you called and what transpired, and names as well if you have them so you can do a chargeback with your CC if they refuse to give a full refund.

I'd also consider compiling the story and results and contacting Kate at flyersrights.org
They can help put some pressure and negative publicity if needed.

FlytheTail

Discrepancies / inconsistencies in fare codes are not uncommon with alliance partners. A code fare in business for one carrier could be an economy fare code for another. For example, S and I are business for Delta but highly discounted economy for China Southern (see this Delta webpage). IMO, it should be Delta's fault if they misinterpreted another airline's fare code. I presume you have a printout that clearly states business class of service?

siberslava

I do have a print out that shows the China Southern KLM codeshares as Business. This is the purchase confirmation from the website, which also clearly states the MQMs (Miles earned = 23476 / MQMs earned = 35214). This is what has been faxed to Atlanta

rylan

Do you still have the ticket receipt info as well?

3Cforme

The details of the Delta ticket receipt are important.

The OP isn't going to like this answer, but under industry convention his beef isn't with Delta - it's with the operating carrier. Delta - irrespective of the booking on delta.com or 006 ticket stock - is simply the agent for the operating carrier. If the Delta reservation receipt and ticket receipt show a fare class and cabin that map to Business, KL needed to provide it. I suspect the best avenue for cash compensation is the EU cabin-downgrade compensation rule.

http://images.delta.com/delta/pdfs/eu_notice.pdf

designflaw

Ouch! Thats not good. However, if Delta refunded the money, I just can't see anything more coming from them. I do hope something works out in your favor though.

Jaimito Cartero

Say whaaaaaat?

exwannabe

I don't think the EU rules are a big help here. The question was a fare bought in Y that was shown to the OP as being in C.

The transaction occurred in IST (is that in Europe or Asia?), via a US website on a China carrier.

The best is trying to get DL to understand what happened.

I doubt the OP will be made whole, but he should get a lot more than a few thousand SMs thrown his way.