Upgrades Disappeared T-1
 

My apologies if this has been discussed before, I did a quick search and didn't find anything relevant. I have a multi-city trip starting this afternoon and ending tomorrow evening, I was upgraded to first on 3 of the flights and was in Comfort+ for the rest but I noticed yesterday morning that my upgrades were gone and I was in the main cabin for all of the flights. I called Delta and they advised me that a supervisor had manually removed all the upgrades and asked me if I had called and requested it (which I hadn't), they were able to get one of the first class seats back and put me in Comfort+ for the rest of the flights. Has anyone experienced this before? It's not a big deal for me but I was curious if it had happened to others.

The record should be noted with why the downgrades occurred. No supervisor is going to manually downgrade your flights, especially all of them, without a reason. Was there a schedule change? Did you get rebooked on all flights for some reason?

Even if you called in and asked for a downgrade any agent would do it for you. They don't need a supervisor to do it.

There has to be more to the story here. Shenanigans?

-RM

The CSA I spoke to said that there are no notes on why the supervisor removed the upgrades, I re-checked the flights and there are no schedule changes either. I did move all of my flights a day back but that was last week even before the upgrades cleared so I don't think that had anything to do with it, as far as the supervisor doing it...I was thinking the same thing, why would he/she get involved and why an agent couldn't do it? Again I am not upset bcos I am on the upgrade list and it looks I am going to be ok on those flights where I lost the seats but it still was very perplexing to me that something like this happened.

My guess would be a paid F passenger called and had a supervisor force an UG out to SDC on one of your segments and they inadvertently removed you from all your segments.

Did you have any aircraft changes?

Or were you assigned seats that might be required for passengers with special needs?

I'd call DL and escalate. A supervisor shouldn't just decide to downgrade a DM for no reason. If you were watching the upgrades clear and remember the seats you were assigned when you were automatically, do you have any sense whether yours were the last upgrades on the segments in question?

It seems odd also that this happened for three of four or more segments as the odds of someone buying FC (or a 360 insisting on upgrades) on the same three segments of a multicity trip would be very low unless the three segments are a natural and popular business oriented routing at a heavy time for business travel.

Ah...that may be a possibility.

No aircraft changes...A321, MD 88 and A321 when I booked and they are the same now as well.

I am not sure how I can tell which F seats are for special needs passengers, is there a way to tell? I probably still have the emails I got when I cleared the upgrades so I can look up the seats I was assigned, not sure if I was one of the last ones cleared but I can defn dig into it...thanks for the suggestions. The segments were DCA to ATL (Thursday at noon) ATL to MIA (Thursday mid afternoon) and MIA to ATL (early Friday morning) ...I can tell for sure that DCA to ATL is elite heavy but other are medium I would think.

horrendously bad luck if this was true of all 3 of your flights, but another explanation is FAM on those flights - they are required to assume specific seats in the F cabin. however, since your MIA-ATL was on a different day, this is an unlikely explanation for why all 3 segs would have been DG.

i'd definitely call and escalate, that is completely unacceptable without a very good explanation and probably some comp to offset.

Do you book on delta dot com directly, or through a travel portal like Concur?

I have had issues with my company's travel portal kicking back my first class or C+ upgrade, or taking me out of my seat assignment.

I book thru my company's travel portal hosted by Amex and it is possible that they could do something like this but the fact that a Delta supervisor manually downgraded me is the puzzle I am not able to solve...unless a travel agent from Amex called Delta and asked this to be done but then I am not sure why they would do that.

Agreed, the downgrade without any explanation is definitely bothersome...I'll call Delta once I get home and see what they say, thanks for the suggestions from all you guys!

I've had that happen, but I assume it had more to do with oversold flights. IE, my originating flight leaves 10 minutes late. Delta reboots me on a later connecting flight. I show up at my purchased gate- they will try to accommodate me, but all upgrades are lost. I also had this happen one time because Delta claimed to have canceled and then latter renstated the flight.

i got upgraded last month on a morning SEA-ATL flight using a RUC after being seated ( I was #1 on the list). I waited until boarding slowed down and made my way to F ( boarding pass on my phone). FA stated my wife ( who was 2000 miles away) declined the upgrade so we could sit together. I was sitting next to 2 guys. FA declined to identify the passanger who claimed to be my wife:-)

I read the story as your boarding pass scanned good (green beep) for the F upgrade while an FA allowed a coach pax to seat swap for your seat. ::(
Next time, stand in the isle, and ask an FA to get the GA to "help find my assigned seat." FA's normally don't downgrade anyone.
BTW, did the RUC get used, and later reinstated when you complained?

I would call DL back and ask to speak with a supervisor. Whatever the reason, there has to be a reason. Every action taken on a PNR is logged and DL can untangle that.

If this does not work out, I would send a note to DL with the specific fact that you were told that a supervisor had downgraded you manually (thus hopefully meaning that you won't get a cut & paste answer) and asking that DL investigate why the supervisor did this.

Speculating about who and why is not going to do anything.

I have to admit that I was such DYKWIA once and it worked for me (I have no idea if they removed upgrade or just overbooked the cabin).

I can not always afford to fly in paid F, but when I do, I totally expect a seat to be available for last minute changes and missed connections at least a few hours before departure, unless of course F is sold out. I think IM got much better, but in the past it could happen that upgrades took all available seats 24 hours before departure.

I have never heard of DL downgrading confirmed F pax, upgraded or not, because someone wanted to SDC. Nothing about buying a first class ticket on one flight entitles you a first class seat on a different flight (there is no such thing as guaranteed same day change). At best your claim to that seat is equal to the claim of the upgraded medallion because you are both using medallion benefits to access a seat that you did not pay for, so whoever got it first should keep it. If DL wants to oversell an F cabin and offer compensation for volunteers or to IDB pax, that's a different story, but I don't see that happening at a customers request.

Finally got around to calling Delta today and the agent I spoke to said that there are no records of the downgrade and she can't see why any of this happened, she did call another department that she said would be able to look into this but they didn't offer any feedback that was useful either so more head scratching than anything else. I did go ahead and write a note to DL explaining the situation and asking for clarification/insight into what may have happened to my reservation last week and why I was downgraded on multiple flights at once.

I book through Concur and have never had that issue.

Multiple people at my company had the issue, and I read about it on a few other Delta-related sites. When reported to Delta, all they see is that someone/something rejected the upgrade or seat assignment.

I reported it to our travel people, and evidently it was a glitch due to some sort of setting that assigns seats (or tries to). When the upgrade goes through from Delta, it kicks it back to the originator (Concur in this case). The originator tries to assign a seat but can't do it due to violating policy or something to do with this setting, and then either rejects the upgrade entirely or rejects the Delta-assigned seat assignment.

I think our Concur administrators fixed the setting, as it appears to have stopped happening.

My reaction to the "no records of the downgrade" is to suspect that someone is trying to cover his/her tracks, but I suspect that someone higher in the organization or a good IT person can untangle the electronic record. I'd continue to pres and escalate if necessary. It's sounding more suspicious......

I've had bad things happen when I've somehow been upgraded before the ticket has been issued.

Quick update on this, finally got a response from Delta this afternoon for the note I sent. It was for the most part boiler plate with some minor tweaks to the message relevant to my situation and an offer for 9k skypesos for the inconvenience, I don't think whoever read my compliant quite understood what my situation was so I am starting to feel like I may not get very far with Delta on this one but I'll send a response back anyway.

O would call CS number, not the DM line, but the CS number. They have much more power to find out what happened/offer amends then anyone else at DL. Also emails can be misunderstood, while with call you know what is being said.