gpez

I've long since migrated from Delta as my FF preference but until the DL/AS partnership dries up (soon?) I still fly DL metal quite a bit and this holiday will be no exception.

The other day I got an itinerary change email from DL saying the flights my wife and I have to visit her family have changed. Cringing, I opened it to find that both the outbound and return flights had changed by nearly 4 hours each. The outbound change, while not great that we'd end up spending less time with family, was manageable however to my shock and surprise our return flight was scheduled 3 days later than we intended! I couldn't believe that we had accidently booked for the wrong dates (my wife and I double check each other for our trips!) but lo-and-behold I found our confirmation email did in fact have the wrong return date meaning something somewhere was booked wrong to begin with and we had just noticed due to the schedule change. Since we have no status with DL and I've had sup-par experiences with their customer service before I hunkered down for a lengthy, winded, and expensive ($400 fare difference, $400 change fee, according to the web site) call with the reservations line. After being on hold for 3 minutes, a kind and courteous rep changed our return flight back to the day we intended, all within 5 minutes and with no questions at no charge. I hung up thrilled that our holiday was saved but also skeptical that I woke up in some alternate universe that morning where DL CS was fast and helpful to us "kettles".

I've sent my feedback to DL but felt it worth posting that DL had scored some major kudos points in my book. For the first time I've felt sad that the AS/DL partnership is likely not for long...

mot29

I think this reflects, at least in part, on the fact that DL seems to give their agents some ability to make "judgement" calls.